Category: Culture
Valor Without Renown
Eowyn: My Lord! Aragorn! I am to be sent with the women into the caves. Aragorn: That is an honorable charge. Eowyn: To mind the children, to find food and bedding when the men return....
The Attempted Congressional Ethics Coup Is Writing on the Wall
“The days have gone down in the West, behind the hills, into shadow.” – Theoden son of Thengel, Seventeenth King of Rohan, from the Lament for the Rohirrim I don’t know how to fix Washington....
How to Love Christ More than Christmas
It’s a crazy, wonderful time of year. How might we keep our heads and hearts on the one who is the real wonder? Remember the season is more than the sentimentality This is perhaps a...
We Knew What Was Happening in Aleppo. We Have No Right to Act Shocked.
The end of the siege of Aleppo came with fury and fanfare. The city’s fall—or liberation, depending on your politics—much like the entirety of its four years of unceasing war, was brutal. Cluster bombs, the...
The Siege of Aleppo
Syria’s Stalingrad has seen more destruction than any warscape is entitled to. Barrel bombs, hell cannons, the deliberate targeting of schools and hospitals, civilians as human shields, damage to UNESCO heritage sites, failed truces, deprivation,...
Resistance as an Act of Christian Hope
Two weeks ago I wrote about our ultimate hope being in the gospel and the person of Jesus, not in votes or earthly powers. Last week I wrote about practical hopes—silver linings for today held...
Reasonable Hope: Bright Spots When the Day is Dark
Maybe I read too much fantasy as a teenager, but my tendency is to make epics out of everything. Calamities are more interesting than your run-of-the-mill conundrums. The apocalypse is more exciting than roadblocks. Revolutions...
Do Not Lose Heart
This morning, the sun rose. A shadow fell against the wall, and we leapt, only to find it was our own. A final leaf clung to the mortal life of a scarred and limping bough....
The Aleppo Deception
Everyone has an agenda. I know that. You know that. Politicians, the media, even humble bloggers have their biases and narratives. What they know and what they think they know. What’s true and what they...
Aleppo, presidential perfection, and what must be known
The life of a candidate for president of the United States is lived under the microscope. Candidates are constant media fodder, the subject of skeleton-seeking investigations, and the unfortunate darlings of an overeager paparazzi. There’s...