Be Strong and Holy

Worth meditating on:  Apparently the/a Greek word for “holy” also means “strong”.

In Christianity, we are called to sanctification, the lifelong process of cooperating more and more with God’s work to make us holy, pure and set apart for His service.  In one of the seeming paradoxes of Christian theology, this process also makes us spiritually stronger and stronger, even as it also makes us more and more dependent on God, the eternal Source of all goodness and love and power.

‘Most people become “ready to get married” when they get married.’

Dennis Prager offers some incisive observations about our culture and growing up.

The same holds true for becoming a parent. Very few people are “ready” to become parents. They become ready . . . once they become parents. In fact, the same holds true for any difficult job. What new lawyer was “ready” to take on his or her first clients? What new teacher, policeman, firefighter is “ready”?

Divorce: A Firsthand Account

Kate Mulgrew speaks frankly about her divorce, and what it did to her children:

We were driving across the Mojave Desert toward Mammoth Mountain. Ian was in the front seat, next to me, and Alec was in the back. It was late afternoon. I could feel the sun withdrawing; so I accelerated, hoping to make it to the mountain before dark.

The energy in the car was high, lit by a strange blue flame.

“Why isn’t Dad with us?” Ian demanded. “When is he coming up?”

John Boehner Announces Retirement, Reminds Us to Keep Things in Perspective

I think this is something beautiful:

“Boehner Explains Retirement From House Speakership: ‘It’s A Wonderful Day’”

House Speaker John Boehner capitalized on the busiest news day in history to announce his retirement and drift queitly back to Ohio. He entered this Capitol Hill news conference singing a song.

“Last night I started thinking about this, and I woke up. I said my prayers as I always do, and I decided, you know, today’s the day I’m going to do this. As simple as that,” Boehner said.

Specifically,

‘The arc of history is long, and it bends where God wills it.’

Beautiful, just beautiful.  NRO’s David French:

This month, Ta-Nehisi Coates published Between the World and Me, a powerful collection of essays written in the form of letters to his teenage son. The book is a sensation on the left, and it is full of rage and even hate. Rather than write a conventional review of the book, I thought I’d respond with my own letter, written to my seven-year-old African-American daughter.

Dearest Naomi . . .

What Women Want

No kidding, these and only these two things came in the mail today:

(1)  Current issue of National Review.  Cover story: “Jailhouse Feminism: What the raging gets right”, Mary Eberstadt.  Excerpt:

Yet listening in on some of the conversation today suggests an explanation other than simple venality. Something else is up out there making female trash talk all the rage — something unexpected, poignant, and, at the same time, awful to behold. It’s the language of bondage and captivity, told by prisoners of the sexual revolution.

Upside-down

Overheard at work (quoting from memory):

Woman 1 (recalling when she found out she was pregnant):  I told her, I can’t marry this guy—there’s no way.  And she said, That’s OK.  I’m so glad she didn’t say, Then why were you having sex with him?

. . .

Woman 2:  You don’t have to have sex with someone just because you’re married to him.

Kasich’s Commencement Address

Governor Kasich gave a sermon at the University of Cincinnnati graduation over the weekend.  Pretty good!  (By that I mean that it was a pretty good sermon, but by that I also mean that being so explicitly Christian in such a culturally mainstream context is a pretty good accomplishment these days.)

Talking about Politics and Religion

They say you shouldn’t talk about politics and religion, but I had occasion to go to two Thanksgiving dinners last week, and at both I was fortunate to have the opportunity to talk about politics and religion, if not with the whole party, then at least with a couple of the people there.  It went, as far as I am aware, very well:  Neither they nor I became unpleasant or unkind at any point; no one raised his voice or started interrupting or talking over anyone.  They were, in fact, perfectly enjoyable conversations, even though (if it doesn’t go without saying) we disagreed on the substantive underlying issues (I was talking with an atheist, a liberal, a Muslim, etc., about health care, etc.).

Getting Warm

“The weather gets warmer, and so many questionable decisions get made.”

Quick Thoughts on the Superbowl

I watched it (people at my church invited me to their Superbowl party).  I thought it was an exciting game, and I don’t even watch football!  The Baltimore Ravens ran up a seemingly insurmountable lead in the first half; the San Francisco 49ers made an impressive effort and almost caught up in the second half, but ultimately were unsuccessful.

In U. S., 22% of Pregnancies Aborted, 1.2 Million Abortions a Year

Just for everyone’s reference, according to the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute, more than one in every five pregnancies in America today is terminated by induced abortion, adding up to more than a million abortions a year.

Arts & Letters Saturday: ‘Brick’

This week’s work is the song “Brick” (1997), by Ben Folds Five.

‘Coming of Age’

At National Review Online, one Betsy Woodruff has an interesting discussion of two authors of the current popular culture, Judd Apatow and Lena Dunham.

Apatow and Dunham have a lot in common . . . .

But there’s an important difference between Apatow’s work and Dunham’s, and that is that Apatow tells and re-tells stories of growing up, while Dunham shows a group of women who stubbornly refuse to do so. Apatow shows characters learning the importance of responsibility and morality, while Dunham’s characters are largely devoid of the former and uninterested in the latter.

Mitt Romney Secretly Donated Milk for Homeless Veterans

Did you know that Mitt Romney anonymously donated half the cost of 7,000 pints of milk for homeless veterans every week for two years?  Watch the interview with the man who has personal knowledge of these events.  Glenn Beck.com describes roughly what happened:

As it was pointed out by a few at the RNC and became evident after Glenn’s staff began telling him the stories they were finding, Romney isn’t the kind of guy that likes to talk about the things he has done to help others. . . .

After he spent forty minutes going through their books, he told them, “You run a very good place, very tight.  Very good.” Romney asked to go on another tour of the hospital, and after spending an hour and forty minutes there, the last question he asked was, “So what… what do you — what are you lacking?  What do you need help with?”

Mitt Romney Dropped Everything and Used His Whole Company to Find and Save Missing Girl

Did you know that Mitt Romney once turned his company and its business partners into a huge operation to find a missing girl?  The story has been reported in several places (below), and even Politifact admits it’s true, as does Snopes.  Deroy Murdock describes what happened:

Melissa Gay, Bain Capital partner Robert Gay’s daughter, vanished while visiting New York City in July 1996. Then-CEO Romney closed Bain’s Boston headquarters and jetted to Gotham to find the 14-year-old. Romney flew in his private-equity company’s 50 employees and transformed a Marriott Hotel into a command post. He consulted the NYPD and recruited private eyes. He dispatched staffers to enlist Bain’s business associates. Bain’s printer, R. R. Donnelly, produced 300,000 missing-person fliers. Bain’s CPAs at Price Waterhouse placed the handbills all over town. Duane Reade, a Bain-portfolio company, stuck leaflets in shopping bags at 52 local outlets.

Obama Voted to Perpetuate Modern-day Infant Exposure

The Susan B. Anthony List and the Women Speak Out PAC have an ad about infanticide that apparently will air during tonight’s presidential debate:

‘I always thought there something ill-fated about . . . “shovel ready jobs” [for] a society that no longer encourages people to pick up a shovel.’

Ace of Spades HQ calls our attention to an interesting letter from the Dirty Jobs guy, Mike Rowe.

But mostly, Dirty Jobs was an unscripted celebration of hard work and skilled labor. It still is. Every week, we highlight regular people who do the kind of jobs most people go out of their way to avoid. . . .

. . . our country has become emotionally disconnected from an essential part of our workforce.  We are no longer impressed with cheap electricity, paved roads, and indoor plumbing. We take our infrastructure for granted, and the people who build it.

Ryan’s Widowed Mother Started Small Business UPDATE BELOW

Bonus Paul Ryan fact:  Did you know that Paul Ryan’s mother, after the death of her husband, went back to school and started a small business, all while caring for Ryan’s aging grandmother?

Click for video.  Transcript:

When my dad died, my mom went back to school.  She went back to college, got a new skill or new trade, and then she started a small business.  My mom had three or four employees at that small business that she started.  We were taking care of my grandma at the time, she was going to school, and then she started this small business.

A Few of My Favorite Bible Passages

A friend recently asked about my favorite Bible passage.

Of course the whole book is non-optional!  I recommend reading all of it, and reading any part of it in the context of the rest of it (and in the context of Christianity as practiced by the church across times and places).  So without meaning to disparage any parts not mentioned, here are a few of my favorite passages:

“And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.”
Ecclesiastes 12:12