Melissa WIley: Fresh Starts and Her Rule of Six. A good beginning to the new year.

Randy Alcorn on Joel Stein, Starbucks, and Heaven. I’m going to be reading Mr. Alcorn’s book Heaven in January, and I’ll let you know what I think. For now, I think his response to Mr. Stein was gracious and Christ-like.

Joe McKeever: My Dad Keeps Sending Me These Notes. Mr. McKeever gave me an idea, and I’m taking notes in my Bible and planning to give it to one of the urchins someday.

Mental Multivitamin: In a ragged pocket . . . Ms. Multivitamin has such a gift for appreciating the finer things in life, like poetry.

S.M. Hutchens at Mere Comments: Not Your Father’s Christianity—Or Anybody Else’s. Hutchens posits that “loss of faith” has more to do with license to sin than with intellectual doubts. I rather think he’s right.

Alan Noble on Aslan, the Grandfatherly God at Christ and Pop Culture. Have the Narnia movies removed all the “danger” from Lewis’s picture of God?

Ken Brown on Selfishness and Sacrifice in LOST.

Nine kids, 12 years and 30,000 diapers later and all I am sure of is how much I don’t know about parenting at Urban Servant. Humility is something we could all use a good dose of.

Examining the unborn at Bookworm Room. A thoughtful examination of abortion ethics from a Jewish perspective.

Jennifer at Conversion Diary on How I Became Pro-Life. Self-explanatory title, but it’s thoughtful and engaging as I’ve come to expect from this formerly atheist blogger.

The Headmistress, in a post from 2005 on Being Poor and welcoming a child. I linked in 2008 because it’s a good story for any year.

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? by Orson Scott Card. Not a blog post, but a newspaper column by the noted author of novels and science fiction who is a Democrat, by the way, this scathing indictment of the irresponsibility and the duplicity of the press and of the Democrat party in regards to the financial crisis is a must-read, even though they got away with it.

Sinners Need Silence, and Ultimately, a Saviour. Thoughts on chapter 2, Method, of Christianity For Modern Pagans by Peter Kreeft, a commentary on Pascal’s Pensees. Kreeft quotes Kierkegaard: “Therefore, create silence.”
The purpose of the silence is to make a space for the truth to be heard and experienced.

Why Read? I give four reasons that Christians especially should be readers.

What To Read? Some suggestions on choosing reading material.

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. My thoughts on my favorite author of the year.

Semicolon Author Celebration: Charlotte Zolotow. On June 26, we celebrated Charlotte Zolotow’s birthday with a list of favorites and links to your posts.

Semicolon Author Celebration: Tasha Tudor. Ms. Tudor died earlier this year at the age of 91. On her birthday in August, I celebrated her life and work as did others.

100 Pumpkins. A celebration of pumpkins and all things pumpkin-ish.

To Vote or Not to Vote? I believe in voting, prayerfully, and leaving the results to God.

War and Reconstruction: Establishing Democracy in Italy and Iraq. In which I discuss two books, A Bell for Adano by John Hersey and Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers, and the efficacy of reconstruction efforts in Italy after WW II and in Iraq now.

Interview with Author Andrea White. My only author interview this year: you should read her books, especially Window Boy.

Humor in the Bookstore. Snarky review of the latest sales flyer from LargeWeight Christian Bookstore.

12 Projects for 2009. I am planning to keep referring back and linking back to this one since I want to complete and enjoy all of these projects.

Church:
Julie Neidlinger on Why I Walked Out of Church, and George Grant on Why We’re Losing the Julies of this World.

What she longs for, she says, is her “home town church” filled with “ordinary, uncool people” who actually “know each other.” In other words, she longs for “parish life.”

Sherry here: How do we get back to that “old-time religion” where people related to people instead of to programs?

Community:

Trey Garrison in the Dallas Morning News on Why I Don’t Want Diversity in My Neighborhood. I got the link for this article from Amy’s Humble Musings, and it’s a good argument for homeschoolers who get hit with the “diversity” complaint, too. Mr. Garrison says:

Seriously, if the only exposure to other people your kid gets is when she’s sitting in a place where you move about like cattle at the sound of a bell and have to ask permission to go to the bathroom (i.e. school), what kind of sheltered life are you giving your kid?

Family:

Dorothy at Urban Servant (got this link from Amy, too) says: “Nine kids, 12 years and 30,000 diapers later and all I am sure of is how much I don’t know about parenting.”

Oh, how true, and oh, how I needed to hear this message both to keep me from advice-giving and to remind me that Engineer Husband and I are the only ones who are truly experts on our eight children, and we don’t know much.

Sallie on Why Sarah Palin Makes Sense to Me: “It is easy for me to accept this situation and believe she could do a good job as both a mom and veep/president because of my marriage.
If I were handed an extraordinary opportunity, David would be right there supporting me. I have no doubt that if God called me to do something, David would adjust his life accordingly so as to make it possible. (I also know because I asked him yesterday.) It wouldn’t even have to be something as extraordinary as running for Vice President. But if it were something that would require sacrifice and his taking over more of the home, he would do it in a heartbeat.”

I, too, have such a husband, and I am oh so thankful for him.

The Media
Mark Steyn: “I would like to thank the US media for doing such a grand job this last week of lowering expectations by portraying Governor Palin – whoops, I mean Hick-Burg Mayor Palin – as a hillbilly know-nothing permapregnant ditz, half of whose 27 kids are the spawn of a stump-toothed uncle who hasn’t worked since he was an extra in Deliverance.

How’s that narrative holding up, geniuses?”

Barbara Nicolosi really, really didn’t like what the filmmakers have done with the new movie version of Brideshead Revisited.

Imagine if someone did a new adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird and it ended up savagely racist? That’s what they’ve done here. A profoundly Catholic novel, in this “adaptation”, Brideshead Revisited is viciously anti-Catholic. They turned a movie about God and the soul, into a lurid love triangle between a homosexual, his sister and a hapless hunk. It’s lame. It’s bad.

I’m watching the 1981 mini-series version, and I think it’s quite good. This admittedly slow-moving film version of Evelyn Waugh’s novel has helped me to understand things about the characters in particular that I just didn’t get when I read the book. Here are my thoughts on the novel from about two years ago.

Semicolon’s September: Celebrations, Links and Birthdays

S.M. Hutchens on education: Maieusis, the work of midwives, involves knowledge and opinion about the process and what its ends are. Those who practice it must understand what is normal and desirable, know error or anomaly, and take steps to correct it with as much force as is required to accomplish the right end. The teacher’s task, to be sure, is essentially that of a guide and encourager, but to do this he must know the path to be taken, and equally, what is not the path, and is to be discouraged. His knowledge of his subject is not to be imparted or simply transferred as much as put forward for the advantage of the learner–who is to make of it what he can, and may be examined by the master on that making, the examination, ideally, being for the master’s learning as well as the student’s.

Anthony Esolen on conservatism and so-called homosexual marriage: When a high court overthrows over two millennia of western tradition, all English common law, and the express will of the people, to engage in an unheard of experiment touching upon the most intimate matters of human society — marriage and the family — and when the people supinely put up with it, at best hoping to tweak the decision or overturn it in some vainly hoped-for election, then it is not the case that civic liberty will soon be lost. It already has been lost. Quit looking at the ephemeral! Your forefathers rebelled over a few high-handed taxes without parliamentary representation. They and their descendants for a hundred and fifty years would have tarred and feathered the silly members of that court, denouncing them as fools and tyrants, and putting them back in their place.

May is Get Caught Reading Month. Doesn’t he (yes, it’s a boy) look as if he’s excited about his reading choices?

Et Tu? on God and the tow truck driver: “Eventually I realized that what it means to accept I am part of God’s story is to ask in every moment not ‘What is God trying to tell me with this situation?’ but rather, ‘How can I better know, love and serve God through this situation?’ It is to stop reading tea leaves to see what God thinks of all my great, important plans and to realize that my plans are neither great nor important in the grand scheme of things.”

Alan Noble at Christ and Pop Culture has a brilliant discussion of Aslan as presented in the movie version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe versus C.S. Lewis’s Aslan: “For Lewis, this experience was central to any Biblical understanding of God, and so when he created Aslan as a Christ-figure, it was fitting that he should have the other characters of his books respond with awe-ful fear to Aslan. He was the God of Narnia, and just like the God of this world, any real encounter with him is bound to be marked by reverent fear and wonder. In the film adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the numinous quality of Aslan’s character all but disappears, and with it Lewis’ conception of God.”
I think Mr. Noble is absolutely right, but the contrast may have been unavoidable, given the limitations of the film medium. How can anyone portray a truly God-like lion using costumes, actors, and video technology? In this instance, words and the imagination are much better tools.

If you like words, you’ll enjoy this essay by Joseph Bottom from The Weekly Standard: “Thwart. Yes, thwart is a good word. Thwarted. Athwart. A kind of satisfaction lives in such words–a unity, a completion. Teach them to a child, and you’ll see what I mean: skirt, scalp, drab, buckle, sneaker, twist, jumble. Squeamish, for that matter. They taste good in the mouth, and they seem to resound with their own verbal truthfulness.”

A husband, father, deacon and grad student confesses: he loves chick flicks: “Sure they’re often shallow and clichéd, but these stories always center on people who go out of their way to make each other feel special and loved, and I for one can never be reminded of that too often.”

Carrie at Mommy Brain passes on some links and resources for your poetical enjoyment.

Mental Multivitamin: In a ragged pocket . . . “. . . you don’t need a plan or a permission slip to enjoy poetry with your family. Simply pull down a collection of poems and read. Play with the language. Take turns delighting in silly poems. Teach one another the importance of old favorites. Recite from memory the poems you’ve learned. Let favorite pieces become part of the pattern of your family’s secret language, like lines from favorite books and films.”

Some of Ruth’s favorite poetry books.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere..”
Blaise Pascal

S.M. Hutchens on losing one’s faith: “Experienced pastors, when faced with students who ‘lose their faith’ at college, do not begin to argue back with them on matters philosophical or theological. They inquire into ‘lifestyle’ issues in the attempt to ascertain whether there is a release to be gained from overthrowing the faith in which they were raised. There usually is.”

I could lose my sanity, not my faith, if I followed many links like this one: Virtual Bubble Wrap. I got the link from Mrs. Dani, so blame her.

In much more serious news, The Headmistress at The Common Room has been blogging the heck out of the travesty of justice that is taking place in my old hometown of San Angelo, Texas. Just go there and find the posts, and you’ll read what I think about what CPS is doing to 300+ children and their mothers. I’m mostly worried about the children. CPS says they are, too, but I don’t believe it.

Gracious Hospitality collects Teatime Recipes this week. I’m planning to host a book club tea at my house soon, so I will definitely be looking over these recipes. There’s a linky there to add a link to your favorite recipe, too.

This collection of links was all over the map from the mundane to the silly to the serious and discerning. Take it for what it’s worth, and don’t get stuck popping the virtual bubble wrap for too long.

Meredith at Like Merchant Ships hosts a great discussion of home libraries, how to acquire one, how to store the books, how many, etc.

Gifts for booklovers by Cheryl Rainfield. These gifts would be appropriate for anytime, even Christmas.

Uses for those orphan books that nobody wants.