Posted by Eric (February 22, 2006 at 5:02 pm)
I am (or was) an English major, which means I can take any two subjects, however remote they may appear to be, and weave them together into some kind of coherent thesis—or at least a thesis that will seem reasonably coherent for as long as it takes a graduate assistant to grade my paper. So today I’m going to link up those little Sudoku puzzles with divine revelation.
If the connection between the two is not already obvious to you—in other words, if you are not an English major—allow me to explain. [Continue reading this entry »]
Posted by Eric (February 20, 2006 at 5:00 pm)
Yesterday I bought a small icon of St. Isaac of Syria. I didn’t know anything about St. Isaac, but I was impressed by the words on the scroll to which he was pointing:
This life has been given to you for repentance. Do not waste it in vain pursuits.
Could there possibly be a sentiment more out of step with our times? It must have been a challenging statement in the seventh century as well, when St. Isaac lived, or he wouldn’t have bothered to say it.
We didn’t invent vain pursuits, but we’re the only culture since the late Roman Empire—which by Isaac’s time had passed away—to so devote our culture to them.
But I didn’t buy this icon in protest of contemporary culture, nor did I decide to write about it here to offer a social commentary. If such were my purpose, I would be missing St. Isaac’s point entirely; that would indeed be a vain pursuit. [Continue reading this entry »]
Posted by Eric (February 15, 2006 at 6:17 pm)
This past Sunday, the family watched Captains Courageous, the classic movie starring Spencer Tracy as the Portuguese fisherman Manuel Fidello, who takes the outrageous brat Harvey Cheyne (Freddie Bartholomew) under his wing after fishing him out of the sea when he fell overboard on a cruise with his tycoon father. It’s a film about what it means to be a man—a film that could scarcely be made today, when we’ve lost that meaning. (Witness Brokeback Mountain.) [Continue reading this entry »]
Posted by Eric (February 15, 2006 at 12:45 pm)
I’m of “three minds” on this whole Muhammed cartoons business—or at least of two minds. On the one hand, I’m disgusted at the violent reaction of the so-called “Muslim Street” over the kind of ridicule that we Christians have to put up with day after day from the Western media. But on the other hand, I have to admit a kind of admiration that Muslims are so willing to go to the mat defending the Prophet; and it’s always hard to muster a whole lot of sympathy for Europeans and their sneering attitude towards religion in general.
If I’m of a “third mind” about the whole business, it’s that these cartoons are just plain stupid. [Continue reading this entry »]
Posted in Culture & Society | Comments Off on Of Three Minds
Posted by Eric (February 14, 2006 at 2:26 pm)
![[Muddy MTB Drivetrain]](/blogpix/2006/muddy01.jpg)
Last Saturday I had the rare opportunity to mountainbike for a couple of hours in the afternoon. (I had to drop my sons off at a party about 20 minutes from the trails; not worth it to go all the way home!) With the mild winter we’ve been having, I had my eyes on the weather forecast for days ahead of time—it was supposed to be just at freezing, so the trails would probably be fine. [Continue reading this entry »]
Posted in Bicycling | Comments Off on Muddy
