Best of 2007

Continuing the tradition this blog from 2004, 2005, and 2006, I give you my best from the seventh year of this millennium: Best Novel (read in 2007): Walker Percy’s The Second Coming. As I’ve described him before, Percy is like Dostoevsky with wit. The Second Coming is a novel about a rich, middle-aged man (who … Read more

2007 in places

With a new baby and an in-town move limiting my 2007 movements to a more local sphere, I slept in fewer cities this year than any in recent history: Kingsport, TN Tupelo, MS Washington, DC Woodbridge, VA cf. 2005, 2006.

Joyeux Noel

Let’s not forget this Christmas that the babe in the manger now sits on a throne, that the gentle child is a warrior king who commands vast armies, and that he fights that we may rest in him. The God who is incarnate is making and will make all things new. As he told the … Read more

A Major Award

Seen in my neighborhood: Excuse the blur — the line between discretion and good photography when you’re standing behind a tree snapping shots of your neighbor’s house at night is thin. I’m not cut out to be among the paparazzi. In case you’ve lived under a rock for the past 25 Christmases, the lamp is … Read more

Losing our souls for self

This observation by Eugene H. Peterson is noteworthy: We live in a culture that has replaced soul with self. This reduction turns people into either problems or consumers. Insofar as we acquiesce in that replacement, we gradually but surely regress in our identity, for we end up thinking of ourselves and dealing with others in … Read more