HughHewitt.com: “The advocacy of the establishment of committees charged with dealing out death –and the admission that such decisions have already been taken in the West– is not an event about which one can really be neutral.”

The values of the dealers of death who sit calmly in rooms and move and second people to destruction are not Western. These are the values of the Low Pagans who painted their faces blue and mixed babies blood with the mortar of their houses. Holland is leaving the West and will lack the moral strength to defeat Islam.

Against this paganism, Plato and the High Pagans fought with all their considerable intellectual might. . . only to fail. Christianity united with the best of Greek rationalism to create human rights and dignity. Martyrs died in what became Holland to win human rights. Now the descendants of the liberated squander their patrimony for peace, bread, and land as they kill living babies who cannot consent to their own deaths.

Some moral force is stolen in this debate by the Low Pagans by confusing the issue. They conflate allowing a natural death with active killing. No one argues that one must do extraordinary things to prolong death. Pain medication exists to ease suffering. However, Western medicine, even in the days of the High Pagans, said: “First do no harm.” To actively kill is an ethical jump that most often leads to other horrors. People became used to dealing death.

Even when the guilty are involved too much death is not good for the soul. No one wants the hangman for a son-in-law. What will be the result on the soul of deciding to kill living children? Who can be allied with such folk who decide in their great wisdom who should live and who should die of the innocent?

Imago Dei: William Shatner, Greatest Canadian?: “Not that I’m actually capable of choosing amongst all the figures of worth in Canadian history, but William Howland (see here and here) seems to be far more worthy of our praise than Shatner, even if less influential. “

My “just-for-fun” post on Shatner produced this very good response. Steve is right and I have now swung my massive influence in Canada behind Howland, even though the contest is now over.

I have promised to hit myself with a copy of Anne of Green Gables in deep sorrow for my original post.

Sadly, I get asked about this a great deal:

Advocates of the traditional family who also attend sacramental churches that reserve the priesthood to men sadly have to point out that this “limited patriarchy” need not apply to the secular sphere.

One can oppose women priests, but that says nothing about one’s position regarding the role of women in the state or business. Would that Thatcher had been an American president! Carly Fiorina is an outstanding example of business leadership.

Biola has great examples of women in high academic and administrative positions. Gender has no relevance to qualifications for such jobs. It would not be just to apply it.

Frank Beckwith, a first rate thinker in this area, writes (regarding abortion):

You may want to refer your readers to a piece I published last year in the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, “Roe v. Wade: Its Logic and Its Legacy.” It is posted as an adobe file on my website on this page: http://homepage.mac.com/francis.beckwith/downloads.htm. Many of my other academic articles are posted there as well.

Professor Beckwith is one of the good guys.

My Way News: “The Groningen Protocol, as the hospital’s guidelines have come to be known, would create a legal framework for permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns deemed to be in similar pain from incurable disease or extreme deformities.
The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when the child’s medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it’s best.”

Thanks to Hugh Hewitt for pointing out this story. Hewitt is right to be horrified. It is difficult to think of the brave Dutch, traditional Calvinists and Catholics historically, becoming what they have become. For those opposed to “slippery slope” argument, the Netherlands stands as a warning. Holland has become worse than any conservative could have predicted. It is impotent in the face of terror, is rapidly losing any national identity (including its language), and is morally bankrupt.

However, moral horror is not enough. As Hewitt points out, we must give reasons for our horror.

Why is this wrong? First, it allows human beings to make a decision that is inappropriate for them to make. If there is a creator God who gives life, humans may not have the ability to take it. Theists believe that governments and men cannot take away certain rights, even in difficult situations, from innocent human beings. As Socrates argued, this is why suicide is wrong. You cannot take a thing that is not yours. Americans have always held it to be self-evident that there is a right to life that comes from their Creator. Giving humans the ultimate power to decide who has a life worth living, is inappropriate. Second, it sets a dangerous precedent. Unlike executing the guilty, who have decided to give up their right to life by their own actions, the government has been placed in the power of deciding what life is worth living with folk who cannot consent to their decision. Humans are deciding with no consent that an infant should die. It is not hard to imagine that this is a power that can easily be abused, even if early steps seem innocent. Does anyone want the organization that runs the Post Office to making life and death decisions? Third, the medical profession should be about saving life. It changes the focus of medicine if it becomes involved in taking life. This cannot help, but change how doctors view their practice. Do we really want doctors to learn how to kill? Does anyone requiring expensive medical care, in a state with socialized medicine, want the state to begin to decide who should get medical care? Europe has bad experience with governments who make such decisions.

Finally, one must ask what kind of things will come from such decisions. Does anyone believe a secular society is capable of protecting life? The most secular nations in the history of humankind, the only atheist states, have been the greatest mass murderers in history. It is not Christian fundamentalists, so feared by our media, that have killed tens of millions of people. This was the work of secularists. I do not blame American secularists for this, but I have no desire to see secularism become the majority position in a culture. Over time it tends to become horrific ways. With the Founders, most Americans believe their rights come from God, not government.

I can imagine that some people might look at Holland and find it attractive. However, Holland is a society that does not work. It might be comfortable to an aging population now, but it cannot even reproduce itself. It is hostile to making babies. Any society that cannot sustain its own population, which has embraced a culture of death, is doomed. It also does not protect itself. Like most of Old Europe, it survives in a tough world under the American shield. If it had to pay for its own defense, it would have to doom much of its vaunted social welfare program. Who are those foes? Holland is discovering the answer to this. It cannot even protect itself from an aggressive minority of its minority Islamic population.

The next time an advocate of Old Europe or Canada argues for the superiority of their system ask if it could be sustained if they did not have the American defense.

Phillip E. Johnson has written about this in his crucial book Reason in the Balance. Get it and read it. There is a nightmare world that is possible, if we do not resist this change in our own land.

FOXNews.com - Politics - Poll Shows Support for Abortion Rights: “The poll found that 59 percent say Bush should choose a nominee who would uphold the 1973 Roe v. Wade (search) decision that legalized abortion. About three in 10, 31 percent, said they want a nominee who would overturn the decision, according to the poll conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs.”

Polls like this are essentially useless. Foes of Roe v. Wade know what they want. How many people actually support the unlimited right to take innocent human life? I suspect that the “status quo” always gets a fair number of votes and that most folk do not understand what Roe says: the government essentially can do nothing to regulate abortion. In fact, it often seems easier to regulate even political speech than abortion. If most Americans do not Roe forbids almost all sane abortion regulation, this would sense of other polls showing most people do not favor third trimester abortions.

American is the most religious nation on earth. It is very pro-life. It has the most liberal abortion laws possible, partly because dishonest polls like this are taken seriously and given big play. Politicians understand that at the national level, and in many states, abortion is a loser for the pro-choice side. If you really believe that America is sixty-percent pro-Roe, you should send your offer of help to President Kerry. His pro-choice stand was part of the reason that the electoral college was nearly impossible for him to win.

A mark of modern liberalism (not historic liberalism) is a love of polls and binder bound studies. These binder-men fear reality and so retreat to studies of reality where their utopian theories have a chance to survive. The religious community which deals every day in soup kitchens and minisers to folk with the scars of liberalism and libertine morality has no such option. We minister to real people and see what harms them. We must base our faith in the hard world.

Recently liberals have called themselves “reality based,” but nothing could be further from the truth. Their bastions in Hollywood and the universities have little connection with the world outside of their very isolated and insular bastions. They are often found in urban areas like New York City. Such folk hardly know how people on Staten Island live, let alone Rochester. They explain reality away with misused ideas. This is why so many liberals are sure Bush stole the election. Their theory of what would happen is more real to them than what did happen.

People of faith have no such option. Every Sunday they attend Church where human depravity and divine grace are presented to them. Their faith forces them to confront the reality of poverty and need, if they are serious about it. This word “faith” is widely misunderstood by secular folk and as a result sometimes by Christians who accept caricatures of their own position. Christians have faith, but this does not mean believing despite the evidence. This liberal slander is part of the failure to understand even the basics of views outside of the secular island. Traditionally and Biblically faith is a reasoned hypothesis about the world based on best evidence. It is grounded hope. Most things in life are not “for sure”. . . not even a Farve start for the Pack is certain. . . but one has to make decisions and so one steps out in faith with the best view of the world one can muster. One commits oneself to this view and then sees.

All views of the world are faith based. All people strive to follow evidence.

All except the bizarre world of modern liberalism. There ideal models supersede experience. There the fact that Jesus seems to speak to the human heart is not reason to believe, but reason to doubt based on some obscure academic jargon. The good news is that reality has a way of waking all of us up. No university can isolate the students and faculty forever. Mortality, at the very least, haunts us all. God is real and He speaks, even when we try to drown him out by flash and cash in Hollywood.

So are most Americans in favor of Roe? Perhaps, but elections (reality) do not seem to indicate this is true. If it were true, then conservatives would accept it. We have faced down life-hating societies in the past. We do not derive rights from the consent of the governed, but recognize that it is self-evident that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator, not by the state or the will of the majority, with certain rights that cannot be taken from them. We know, from bitter historical experience, that one of these rights is the right to life.

This is our reasonable faith.

HughHewitt.com: “My guess is that most would double back and add Solzhenitsyn if they had a second chance. “

Yes, Hewitt is right, of course. The toughest thing about being a conservative once-upon-a-time was being anti-communist. In academia, it was thought silly, perhaps even a bit wicked. I will never forget hearing one person who heard Solzhenitsyn speak at Harvard describe him in so many words as wicked. Coming from a wonderful person, who never had an ill word to say of anyone, it amazed me. The leaders of the Soviet Empire came in for no condemnation, but a man who correctly diagnosed the materialism of the West was no good.

Did anyone ever have the moral clarity of Solzhenitsyn against the Soviets? His fall of grace in Western academia where he is almost never read and is basically forgotten is all you need to know about the American academy.

HughHewitt.com: “But it seems to me to be a good sign that a serious reader would have reread a modern novel twice, and if any in the blogging community would like to offer those novels they have been through at least twice, I will link those posts here as a handy guide to Christmas book giving and getting. “

Hugh Hewitt is a very serious man, if not a serious football fan. We can only thank God he defends the Cause better than the Browns defend the pass, run, or the beer concessions.

So what modern novels have I read twice? Not to sound like a college professor, but what counts as “modern”? Anything after Descartes? Stuff from the twentieth century forward?

I will go with the Victorian’s forward. . . just because it lets me put in a plug for one of my favorite writers: Anthony Trollope. Do you like Dickens, but hate his conflicted politics? Try Trollope, a happy Victorian with more realistic characters. His Lilly Dale is one of the best female characters in all of fiction. If students come and ask me about being married, I point them to Small House at Allington. His take on politics, secular and sacred, is a sure guiding light in times of storm. Whenever I am sad, I read a Trollope. Phillip E. Johnson, who may be the smartest man in California, got me started on Trollope which is not the smallest debt of gratitude I owe him.

Hewitt may have put the Inklings off the list, but let me plug Dorothy Sayers. If you have any taste for detective fiction, the most Christian of modern literary forms, then her Peter Wimsey is must reading. Gaudy Night is the best book. I have read it every year since college. Nine Tailors is the best mystery.

If you wonder what causes a philosopher to start Torrey Honors, and hope to change the world by gardening, you must read That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis. I think I have read this book every year since I was twelve. The only book close to this would be Lord of the Rings, which needs no link.

Anything by Flannery O’Connor will show God’s grace to you in the middle of human pain.

Other guilty pleasures include the Horatio Hornblower series. Here is the first. If you have not read Sherlock Holmes every few holidays, you are missing a treat. Most wonderful, though not great literature by any means, is the reliable Rafael Sabatini. Start with his Captain Blood. John Buchan is not politically correct, but tells a great story.

As for Christian fiction, it is improving fast. Though they are not books to re-read, James Bell writes the best airplane books on the market today. You will enjoy all his works, though the latest are the best.

Television - Entertainment - canada.com network: “You decide the Greatest Canadian”

This is an easy one. William Shatner.

Here are three reasons not to vote for a Canadian politician:

1. Canadian politicians are not very important. Globally they rank in importance someplace just ahead of the ruler of Albania and just behind any member of the House of Lords. Canada is a great place, full of amazing people. Canadian politics is a strange blend of the pompous with the ineffectual.

2. Those Canadian figures that mattered did so by kow-towing to actually important British politicians. Most of those are not listed.

3. Modern (post-1950) Canadian politicians created the modern Canadian Armed Forces. Try this link. Brave Canadians? There were many, but most of them fought for an Empire or Commonwealth that no longer exists.

Here are three reasons to vote for Shatner:
1. Star Trek the Original Series is one of the greatest shows to appear on network television. It had a deep culture impact. Shatner was a big part of that success. In fact, recent studies have shown that Shatner, by himself, has had more impact on history than all of Canada qua Canada.

2. Shatner is a musical genius. . . or not. Either way, he now has two “must listen” recordings. Canadian music need no longer be summed up with the question, “What?”

3. Shatner is interesting and eccentric as a person. Canadians are usually merely eccentric

Frequently, internet atheists argue that the American Constitution is a secular document. In one way, they are of course right. From a Christian point of view the Constitution governs the “secular authority.” It is for the City of Man and not the City of God. This is just a traditional Western understanding that the secular and the sacred cannot be one until the return of Christ. The New York Times not with standing few Western thinkers argue for theocracy for this reason. It is a confusion of roles kept apart (to a greater or lesser extent) in thinkers as diverse as Dante, Calvin, and Hooker.

Secularists of the modern sort mean something stronger. They seem to think the Constitution is a secularist document. It sets up a Republic that leaves religion out on purpose.

Of course, secularists have to change word meanings historically to make this argument, but let us grant them for the moment the possibility that the Framers were modern secularists. Since there were almost no atheists at the time, and few if any amongst the Founders, this is a big concession. In fact, modern secularism essentially did not exist in the eighteenth century. Modern secularists show a confusion of Enlightenment thought (two cheers for it!) and deism with post-Darwinian secularism (useless when not wicked). Sometimes they convolute English Enlightenment thought with French thought. One need only look at the religious nature of the Glorious Revolution and the irreligious French Revolution to know the difference.

However, we need not guess. Is the constitute secular in the Christian sense written by essentially religious men or is secularist written to get rid of religion in the lives of men in government? If we apply normal textual rules we need not waste much time. We need merely to read the final article.

U.S. CONSTITUTION: “The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.
done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord (emphasis added) one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names, “

Jesus Christ is mentioned in the Constitution. Of course, a secularist will say this was just a “polite phrase” of the time which meant nothing to the signers. I would dispute that for most of them but let that ride. The ability of the Framers to write about “our Lord” thoughtlessly is the most revealing fact of all, if true. It means they were so deeply immersed in Christian culture, that even when they rejected parts of Orthodox Christian teaching (as Jefferson and some of his disciples did), they could still sign documents this way. If you doubt this phrase means anything let us try an experiment:

I would advise all government-school teachers to begin to describe each New Year as “the year of our Lord.” How can such a description be unconstitutional since it is in the Constitution? Somehow, I cannot see secularists being sanguine about this experiment. The phrase is not so meaningless to them!

Secular government is for the secular sphere. Our Constitution was written by people with an essentially Christian worldview for a public that was overwhelmingly Christian with an understanding that need not (and should not) paste Bible verses over every topic. That is nto real integration of Scripture with life, but wresting Scripture for something else. Other non-Christian groups, in the glory of Western Christianity, were tolerated and eventually allowed to be full members of the secular polity. The massive burden of proof is on anyone who says differently. This simply was not secularism. American is, and always has been, one of the most religious nation, one of the most Christian nations (by numbers of active believers) on Earth.

(BTW: this points to the importance, vital importance of history. Liberals like to live in the future for it is there that their fantastic schemes have hope. Conservatives ground their hopes in the past, since the past actually exits. Hewitt, the voice of Reason so often, should learn to ground his sport’s picks this way. Today he will sit and watch two Ohio teams “slug” it out for exactly nothing and fantasize that they matter. They have not and likely will not in the future. On the other hand, Monday Night Football will host a play-off quality team from Green Bay. Hewitt must learn to make his worldview whole. Repent and turn to Packerhood!)

No wonder geography is dying: “‘We need to engage pupils more purposely,’ he says. ‘Water shortages, famine, migrations of people, disputes over oil, globalisation and debt are all major issues with which our world is grappling and this is the geography of today.’ “

Of course, British classes have dropped learning “lists” for these deeper issues. Shockingly, to educators, this leads to ignorance of, well, actual geography. College is the time for deep discussion, if students are properly prepared. We need high schools to teach students the facts they need to have those discussions.

There is a sad tendency in education that I call “Deeper Issues Syndrome” (DIS). Advocates of DIS often ask, “Why are we teaching geography? What are the deeper issues involved?” Since these perceived “deeper issues” are more interesting, and often more important, than the content of the field teachers are hired to teach, they almost always end up DISing the curriculum too quickly.

To put it simply one must master the fundamentals of a game before the game is a great pleasure to play. There is no way to cheat. One must learn to play the piano fairly well before having the joy of hearing the sound of good, live music. We live in a culture that wants the ends without the hard work of pursuing the means. Some of my students do not want to sit and read page after page of hard books, mastering their difficult messages. They prefer (of course they prefer!) that I act as “guru” and place the cookies on the lower shelf for them. However, done too much this turns the teacher into master and the students into slaves. There is a place for drawing aside the curtain for students and let them see where they are going. I do this all the time, but in our culture it is easy to have this good teaching technique turn into DIS. How does one know when this has happened? A teacher knows when the text or content begins to fade in discussion before it has been mastered by the students for any length of time.

For some reason, the fact that one must know a text before asking profound questions about it rarely occurs to the victim of DIS. Geographically ignorant students (who could not find Albania on the map) end up pontificating about what British or American policy toward Albania should be. Since teens all have opinions they believe to be wise, and learning location of Albania is much harder, DIS is often popular with students. Teachers fallen into DIS dread the question “Why do we have to learn this?” Instead of saying, “So that later we will be able to discuss these important issues.” Dis people drop the study of the curriculum in favor of an overly rapid movement to Deeper Issues.

Of course, some discussion of Deeper Issues early can act as a piece of candy to keep students moving forward. My Greek professor let us discuss certain issue in the Iliad long before we were really able to do so. This took a tiny fraction of our time (most of which was spent in actual translation. . . a fairly wooden task), but reminded us that there was a reason to do the hard work.

The other problem with DIS is that it often leads to a person discussing things for which they have no evident qualifications. The teacher of geography begins to act as social commentator, a job that long suffering tax payers have no reason to think he can do. Even more horrific, in a school that has fallen into DIS, no teacher in the school may know where Albania actually is, but have lots of half-warmed “philosophical” opinions about government policy toward Albania. In that case, Albania as an actual place disappears altogether to be replaced DI-Albania, which need have no connection to actual Albanians.

If we must have government-schools, then let them teach students the basic tools of learning: speaking well, reading well, writing well, numerous, and a basic stock of cultural facts. Let them model good values, as determined by the values of the tax payers in their area. A good teacher will hint at deeper things and the good student will be made thirsty for these things, but one must walk before running.

HughHewitt.com: “The Los Angeles Times reveals that Secretary of State-designate Rice has always cheered for the Cleveland Browns. This ought to assure her confirmation.”

A sad little event took place today. I discovered that Hugh Hewitt roots for a team so bad they have no name.

What does this tell us about Mr. Hewitt?

We know he is bright. How could he fail to root for the only true football team: the hallowed Packers of Green Bay?

There is only one answer: Mr. Hewitt is trying to be a compassionate conservative. He is rooting for the hapless in hopes of proving his soul is full of pity. Tonight Mr. Hewitt sits in a dark room watching all those Super Bowl tapes with Cleveland Brown highlights. He tries as the snow plays on the blank tape to see a better end to The Drive or to imagine that Jim Brown is still playing. And he fails.

I know in the darkness of that moment he turns to a team led by Starr and then Farve. A team so great they name the highest award for their legend coach. A place where the tundra is frozen instead of the minds of barking, mad fans. A place where a team wins. Small town America.

Mr. Hewitt come clean. Is unlike you to root for those whom market forces have shown for decades to be unworthy of a franchise. . .in a place so depressing that teams keep fleeing.

In your heart Mr. Hewitt it is always 1965. It is snowing. And the score is always 23-12. Your team? It should be, must be Green Bay.

SI Sportsman of the Year

He was not a spoiled superstar living for self.

He quietly gave up millions to serve our nation.

He died for our country fighting in Iraq.

Vote for Pat Tillman as Sportsman of the Year.

the evangelical outpost: “Is talk radio really better than I give it credit for? If so, who is the second best talk radio host in America? (We all know that Hugh takes the first honor.) Who is the worst? And is Rush Limbaugh past his prime or is he still a force to be reckoned with?”

NPR has more intellectual content. Even when it is from the wrong point of view, it frequently makes you think. That is a good thing. Our tax money should not be used to support it (though this is a close call). I wish they had more conservative intellectuals, but they have virtues.

First, they play great music (jazz and classical) that would otherwise be unavailable to people without means. Call me a snob, or just a Platonist, but I think music that requires skill and training to play is superior to music that does not. If you believe that “pop” music is equal in skill required, watch the wonderful British show “Faking It.” This show allows folk to try “faking” a job they do not understand.

In one episode a classically trained musician masters the club scene’s “dj” job, including mixing, in about one month. Show me a pop star who could do the same with the classically trained musician’s cello and I will buy land from you in Florida. If great music elevates the soul, then NPR often serves the same role as a public library. I am for more funding for public libraries, so even my tax money used for NPR does not disturb me too much. Congress (the Republican Congress) can waste more money in a minute on much less interesting projects. (Do we need another Robert Byrd anything in West Virginia?)

Second, NPR is a window into right-of-center thinking in grad schools across America. We may find NPR liberal, but most folks I know in academia find it “corporate” and almost fascist. It is good to know what folk are thinking and NPR is a good bridge to what the left is up to in our colleges. Multiply what they say by a left wing factor of ten and you have the picture.

Third, NPR will discuss topics no one else is covering. Some are silly, but often they will take the time to do more indepth analysis. Time is a good thing and commercials, too many commercials, can cut into the ability to make an argument. The discussion on NPR is often deeper, even when wrong headed.

Now don’t get me wrong. NPR is often howlingly bad. It contains a bias against evangelical and traditional religion that is criminal. It has a world view so narrow at times that it makes Rush look broad. Rush will at least consider the range of conservative opinion. NPR is a consistent “safe-liberalism.”

NPR reflects all the strengths (and they are many) and weaknesses (and in my opinion these are fatal) of the modern American academy. Still it is good for conservatives to remember the strengths. I teach bright students, really bright students, and little on conservative media reaches them. Lose the thoughtful people, particularly ones otherwise inclined to agree with us, and we lose a generation.

We need a conservative, thoughtful alternative. Fortunately, there are a few good shows out there. However, no one has really replaced Bill Buckley in being a middle brow intellectual with the excitement of his old “Firing Line.” The Reagan/Buckley debates on the Panama Canal look almost quaint and Lincoln-like compared to most of our present “entertainment.”

Talk radio is often an intellectual waste land. It repeats the same ideas over and over. It rarely argues for them. There is a rarely a true education on talk radio. It often consists of slogans repeated over and over. If you are looking for someone to agree with you (which is a good thing at times), then it is comforting. Ideas wear well and too often talk radio is devoid of ideas.

Talk radio is seldom varied. There is too much politics! Most of us think about politics at times, especially near elections. The rest of the time we go to plays, movies, church, raise a family. Talk Radio acts like it is election eve every night. It seems odd to me that conservatives would be fixed on politics to the exclusion of almost all else.

The best talk radio comes from smart people with a consistent world view. Hewitt? Of course. Long ago he surpassed Rush as the thinking man’s talk radio host. LA has Frank Pastore, funny and very bright. His show is a jewel and rising fast. (Ritual disclaimer: I have appeared on both shows. This simply confirms their good judgment. Yes?) Michael Medved is good, especially as he deals with cultural issues including film. (There is too much politics on talk radio.)

Savage is the worst. He is a litmus test for conservatives. If you cannot say he does bad things, then you are too far in the tank.

As for Rush, I feel of him the way some people in Israel must of thought of King Saul. He is a fallen man who had a chance at greatness. He once was funny. He does not seem to try that anymore. He hardly ever makes an argument. Still, with all the wear and tear, at his best, Rush is still the best. I cannot be the only one to think that he rarely is at his best anymore. I pity Rush. Without knowing anything about his personal life, one could guess that wealth and hard living were wearing down great talent. It is an old story, with Newt as another prime example. Rush is a habit for many people and I still listen at times for the community experience, but the days of “Dan’s Bake Sale” when you never knew what would happen are long over. Pastore’s show is actually funny at times and deals with more topics. Hewitt gives a real education, and despite massively eccentric tastes in football (Go Pack! Go!), he has an unfailing instinct for the main story. Rush? He is like an aging tenor who can still hit the notes, sometimes, but too frequently is mailing in his performance.

I love holidays. Just hearing, “Happy holidays!” normally makes me happy.
Not today. Who knows why?

If blogs are supposed to be, at least partly, about self-reflection, then let me say that today is one of those days when I am tired of myself. Tired of my thoughts on politics. Tired of my thoughts on Plato. Tired of my thoughts on thinking. December is also the end of the year and the semester and I am tired. . .not of my wonderful students, my job, friends, or family. I am tired of me.

Even saying that much is to look at myself looking at myself which is even more tiresome. I am not so much depressed as tired of being in my own head. The only justification in writing such things is, I suppose, that it might help someone else.

One of the good things about being a Christian is that on days when you see yourself as you are. . . as I am doing today. . . you don’t have to try to cheer up. The messes you have made, the people you have offended, the stupid things you did when you were young that now seem a good bit less stupid and good bit more wicked. . . all those things are real. They are part of who you are.

Of course making that sound unique is a new kind of selfishness. Failure is pretty human. Even if you mostly win, and are as gifted as a George Bush, there must come mornings when mortality, your own and those you love, hits you. Family is pretty wonderful and one of the best ways to escape self, but their mortality means that they cannot help in the end. Hallmark is wrong. Christmas better not be all about family.

I am sorry my Aunt Karen and Uncle Roddy are not alive this holiday season. I hate the fact that all but one of my grandparents cannot share the season. The world is such a wonderful place in so many ways that it is a shame that great people have to stop being part of it. And yet they too must have had such days when they knew that they were not much and less than even that.

Of course, they have not stopped being part of the world. They have simply moved out of the Cave into the sunlit lands. I know, better than I know my own banal nature, that they watch over me in the great cloud of witnesses. They have been transformed. Today, this day, they are holy. Hurrah! That is a cheering thought.

The Holidays are Holy Days. They take us outside of weary little heads and our friends and family who cannot save us or themselves. Holy Days save us by being signs to the Holy One who can save it all: nation, family, and yes, self.

In the end, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Blood and Righteousness. When I kneel and pray with all the rest of my parish and say that “we do not presume to come. . . in our own righteousness,” we do not have to waver. It is grace and God’s goodness that is amazing. . .not seeing my own worthlessness.

And that gives me hope. Always hope. That most Christian of virtues. The world, my life, and my future are not about me and my lack of ability. They are not about me at all. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Can anyone get tired of Jesus? Not the real Jesus. The Jesus I create always lets me down. The Jesus outside of me, the real one, is infinite and personal. He is making me, the cosmos, different and pulling me outside of myself to real Self. He calls me to service and less self-reflection. Oddly that makes me more like myself, He says.

I believe Him. Thanks be to God for His grace. Happy Holy Days!