In these divisive days it’s hard to imagine anything that could get Democrats and Republicans to go for a walk together. But apparently, once a month on Capitol Hill, it happens. I learned this wondrous fact by listening to Bring Birds Back, and if you’d like to know more, I hope you’ll listen to Season … Continue reading Can Birds Rehumanize Red & Blue Politics?
With lights dimmed and screen illuminated in my optometrist's examination room, he and I review my latest retinal scan, one eye at at time. My eye appears as an orange globe networked with a map of red blood vessels. The scan allows him to detect signs of early eye disease, tears in the retina and … Continue reading How to Remove the Speck in Your Neighbor’s Eye
"These are the times that try men's souls." -- Thomas Paine Phrases like "these unprecedented times" and "these challenging times" have become cliché as, amid pandemic and pandemonium, the next president will be decided. My father, whose parents survived the Great Depression, whose boyhood memories include World War II and who can tell you all … Continue reading Two Songs for the Election-Anxious Soul
"Put not your trust in princes," the psalmist advised long ago. People didn't choose their leaders back then, so they were, on a material level, absolutely beholden to a king's whims for good or ill. The psalmist reminds them of the human tendency to view the world from a material point of view only, forgetting … Continue reading Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan’s Beatitudes for a Political Leader
Two years before his death in 1990, Walker Percy sent a letter to the New York Times which its editorial board refused to print. I stumbled on an excerpt while finishing Baylor Professor Ralph Woods' Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South. "That our national 'newspaper of record' refused to run a plea voiced by one … Continue reading Walker Percy’s Last Letter to the NY Times and the Red/Blue Corruption of the American Moral Compass
