I got a letter in the mail. Not unusual; it’s from a group of churches based in Tulsa, OK, though the address is printed on tiny font on the back of the envelope at the bottom. It makes me feel a little uncomfortable and several small, irrational fears pop up. Since when did churches have [...]
Archive for the ‘Religion’ category
I thought I was done with this
Well, I guess without people getting emotionally ambushed by blog posts, the Internet would pretty much shut down, wouldn’t it?
Ben Wolfson, of all people, has stepped up the political blogging over at Unfogged recently. On Sunday he posted about California’s Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that would revoke the newly recognized right to contract same-sex [...]
Eyes wide open
As I was re-reading David Foster Wallace online, I received a forwarded email. It was from an aunt whose emails usually contain blinking/singing American flags and/or truisms that would have been cross-stitched on a pillow a generation ago. DFW would have loved her. The emails implicitly assume that I voted for Bush in both cycles [...]
Papa don’t preach
More interesting than whether or not little Bristol Palin is pregnant or whether or not she is in fact baby Trig’s mother is the question of whether or not the Palin family’s “private” affairs should be on or off limits in the nation’s ongoing presidential debate. I say that the private lives of the [...]
Thursday favorites: Polygamist houses
The polygamist house has always fascinated me. It somehow has to hold multiple wives, a large number of children, and the husband that organizes them all. A few weeks ago, a friend and I spent a day in the polygamist community of Colorado City, Arizona taking pictures of houses. We had some pretty unreal experiences [...]
Announcing the first Great Whatsit book club
When I was a kid, I got the greatest pleasure from doing what other people expected of me. Still, there were glitches. My friend L—’s dad taught our Deacon’s Quorum class in church (Sunday School for 12 and 13-year-old boys) a few times and seemed to be annoyed with me when I didn’t like his [...]
A midnight showing of Narnia
There is a point in the book Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis, when a group of characters are hopelessly lost in the forest. The Pevensie children, four siblings transported from mid-twentieth century England to an alternate world called Narnia, are searching for the title character and an army of good guys. Unfortunately the landscape has [...]
The bottom line for everyone
I am one of those congenitally rude people who prefers — nay, needs — to carry on conversations with casual acquaintances about the great taboo topics, religion and politics. Luckily, many other people these days share this flaw, so I can usually find an outlet for this urge.
At work we have a few topics of [...]
A home for flip-floppers
A few months ago this video (Part 1, 2) came out, showing Mitt Romney talking on a right-wing radio show in Iowa about Mormonism and abortion. Romney was once pro-choice when he was runing for office in Massachussetts but apparently had some kind of conversion to the pro-life position once he’d been elected governor. As [...]
