Religion

"Great opportunities to serve God seldom arise, but little ones are frequent." St. Francis de Sales

"If we are not to be scorched and made unfruitful, we need the dew of God. Since we have our accuser, we need an Advocate as well." St. Irenaeus

Neo-Emerson Revival? Very interesting review essay at The New Statesman about religion and modernity [http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/05/religion-american-modern-world]. The premise: Religion and modernity co-exist just fine. Voltaire and the Enlightenment and its progeny have always been wrong about modernity and religion: > Whether Marxian or Millian,

"The Christian should be an alleluia from head to toe." St. Augustine I'll try to keep that in mind. Unfortunately, I fail, repeatedly. Perhaps even more unfortunately, the alleluia people bug me. Not the people with quiet joy, but the in-your-face joyful, the people in whom

"All nature is good." St. Augustine

"When you feel the assaults of passion and anger, then is the time to be silent as Jesus was silent in the midst of His ignominies and sufferings." St. Paul of the Cross

"Pride is utter poverty of soul disguised as riches, imaginary light where in fact there is darkness." John Climacus

"No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks." St. Ambrose

November 2003 When I used to see large families (say, families with five or more children), the idea always creeped into my mind that one or more of the children are, for lack of a better term, expendable. That's not quite the right term, but let me illustrate