Category Archives: Uncategorized

There is a lot of day to go, but as I write this at 6:30 a.m., I feel that it has already been a success. Not an achievement, mind, but a day with rich satisfactions. Those wonderful feelings and the … Continue reading →

I have resisted the word “pronatalism” for quite a while now. On behalf of the clarity of the language will all use and on behalf of all the people who want to talk reasonably about political issues, I am leery … Continue reading →

Politics in the United States is never what you think it is going to be. It is a system put together out of the remnants of half a dozen yard sales. It is made up of completely weird compromises between … Continue reading →

I have long come to terms with the idea that my life is not going to last forever.  I have not given any thought until today to the idea that my marriage is not going to last forever either.  That … Continue reading →

I have a word I would like to share with New York Times columnist Pamela Paul. The word is “monolatry.” It is not as well known as “monotheism” but it is crucially necessary in Old Testament studies. Here is a … Continue reading →

I just finished reading a survey of opinions on forgiveness put together by Christina Caron, who writes about mental health issues for the New York Times. She, and the experts she cites, are looking at forgiveness as a tool. I … Continue reading →

My career has obligated me to hear a lot of commencement addresses. None, I will say, quite like this one. As a tennis fan, I’ve always found it easy to like Roger Federer and it would not have been hard … Continue reading →

Every now and then someone makes a remark that crystalizes a lot of information that was just sitting there unpatterned and unnoticed. A remark like that happened to me recently. I was describing a nagging difficulty I was having with … Continue reading →

The state of Louisiana intends to be at the forefront of a “growing national movement to create and interpret laws according to a particular conservative Christian worldview” according to journalists Rick Rojas, David Chen, and Elizabeth Dias. In a New … Continue reading →

When I got up this morning, I learned that Neil Goldschmidt had died. There will be stories now attempting to weigh his abuse of a young girl in the same scale as his imaginative and thrilling leadership in Oregon politics. … Continue reading →