Rev. Harrison stands firm against our Government's meddling in the consciences of people of faith. Well done - respectful, clear, and eloquently plain-spoken.



[H/T Ray Ortlund]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if this turns out to be one of those "it's funny because it's true" things.

Another reason to retreat from meta-life and spend more time living real life.

Favorite quote: "400 billion tweets and not one useful bit of data was ever transmitted."

[H/T: Forward Progress]

Engineer captures video footage of what appears to be a woolly mammoth crossing a Siberian river. These creatures have been thought to be extinct since about 2,000 B.C.



This is a large animal thought extinct for thousands of years, now spotted. Along with historical notes like that mountain gorillas weren't discovered until the early 1900's, this gives more hope for some day discovering definitive evidence of the existence of Sasquatch.

In a recurring Groundhog Day tribute of their own, the editors of National Review annually post Jonah Goldberg's excellent 2005 paean to the classic Harold Ramis movie, Groundhog Day. Here are the closing paragraphs of Goldberg's article, A Movie for All Time.

Ultimately, the story is one of redemption, so it should surprise no one that it speaks to those in search of the same. But there is also a secular, even conservative, point to be made here. Connors’s metamorphosis contradicts almost everything postmodernity teaches. He doesn’t find paradise or liberation by becoming more “authentic,” by acting on his whims and urges and listening to his inner voices. That behavior is soul-killing. He does exactly the opposite: He learns to appreciate the crowd, the community, even the bourgeois hicks and their values. He determines to make himself better by reading poetry and the classics and by learning to sculpt ice and make music, and most of all by shedding his ironic detachment from the world.

Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin, the writers of the original story, are not philosophers. Ramis was born Jewish and is now a lackadaisical Buddhist. He wears meditation beads on his wrist, he told the New York Times, “because I’m on a Buddhist diet. They’re supposed to remind me not to eat, but actually just get in the way when I’m cutting my steak.” Rubin’s original script was apparently much more complex and philosophical — it opened in the middle of Connors’s sentence to purgatory and ended with the revelation that Rita was caught in a cycle of her own. Murray wanted the film to be more philosophical (indeed, the film is surely the best sign of his reincarnation as a great actor), but Ramis constantly insisted that the film be funny first and philosophical second.

And this is the film’s true triumph. It is a very, very funny movie, in which all of the themes are invisible to people who just want to have a good time. There’s no violence, no strong language, and the sexual content is about as tame as it gets. (Some e-mailers complained that Connors is only liberated when he has sex with Rita. Not true: They merely fall asleep together.) If this were a French film dealing with the same themes, it would be in black and white, the sex would be constant and depraved, and it would end in cold death. My only criticism is that Andie MacDowell isn’t nearly charming enough to warrant all the fuss (she says a prayer for world peace every time she orders a drink!). And yet for all the opportunities the film presents for self-importance and sentimentality, it almost never falls for either. The best example: When the two lovebirds emerge from the B&B to embrace a happy new life together in what Connors considers a paradisiacal Punxsutawney, Connors declares, “Let’s live here!” They kiss, the music builds, and then in the film’s last line he adds: “We’ll rent to start.”

Read the whole thing.

I think Groundhog Day is one of the best movies ever made. I remember watching it on VHS with my wife, years ago; though it does not have an explicitly Christian message, the movie is brimming with redemption. Watching it for the first time surfaced in me an exquisite sense of joy. (And, in my one beef with Goldberg over this article, I thought Andie MacDowell was plenty charming).

If you haven't already watched Groundhog Day, I highly recommend it. If you have, get with the spirit of things and watch it again (and again, and again, and . . .)

Seen on long-time blog friend Jennifer's facebook page:

Every day is Christmas - God With Us. Every day is New Year's - Mercies New. Every day is Easter - He is Risen! Every, every, EVERY day is Thanksgiving.

Amen x infinity.

Now to live like that . . .

In case you are wondering...

1. I'm reverting back to what my second favorite team was back when I was a kid...and going against my grown-up tradition of rooting for the NFC team or the underdog. I just can't root for the Giants in good conscience. So now I'm all in. Go Patriots!

2. This video and song was recorded early in 1986 as a response to the Chicago Bears Monster Hit Single...the Super Bowl Shuffle. So in this song the Patriots predict that they will beat the Bears in SuperBowl XX. Whoops. Bears won, 46-10.

I figure that unearthing this song and re-releasing it to the world will result in a Patriots victory this time! I mean, come on, Spenser can't be wrong!

"God who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing—or should we say ‘seeing?’ There are no tenses in God—the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven trough the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath’s sake, hitched up. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves."

- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

In an earlier comments thread I predicted this rematch. I'm not sure who will win, but I'll go ahead and just say the Giants, to balance out all the Patriot-love.

Who do you think will win? Let us know in the comments.

At this point, I think even the Patriots better be careful underestimating Tebow.

Congratulations to the Broncos. Very few people thought that they would win against the Steelers. I had the Steelers making it to the Superbowl, actually. But I'm happy to be wrong.

I'm looking forward to next week - and fervently hoping for the nearly unthinkable: an AFC match-up between the Broncos and the Texans in Houston in two weeks.

The quote below is a great follow-up to this earlier post. I lifted this entirely from Jared's blog.

Self-denying humility ought to show up in the way we worship together. Thankfully, we don't hear as much these days about worship wars in Christian churches as we did just a few years ago, but they are still there. For years I thought this phenomenon was the bane of the "make it up as you go along" whirl of low-church evangelical Protestantism, and mostly it is. But even with a set traditional liturgy, Roman Catholics and other groups often experience the same kinds of tensions.

Maybe you're like me, reared to have the worship music tastes of a seventy-five-year-old woman. That's because, I think, a seventy-five-year-old woman was picking out the hymns and gospel songs in the church where I grew up. I tear up when I sing "Just As I Am" or "To God Be the Glory." And I'm left cold by what some people call the "majestic old hymns." They sound like what watercress-sandwich-eating Episcopalians from Connecticut would listen to (not that there's anything wrong with that). And so many of the contemporary songs sound as if they were written by commercial jingle writers, trying desperately to find words to rhyme with "Jesus" ("Sees us?" "Never leave us?" "Diseases?"). I'm not saying aesthetics don't matter in worship. Worship is, after all, commanded to be offered with "reverence and awe" (Heb. 12:28). I am saying our varying critiques of musical forms are often just simple narcissism disguised as concern about theological and liturgical downgrade.

We need more worship wars, not fewer. What if the war looked like this in your congregation—the young singles petitioning the church to play more of the old classics for the sake of the elderly people, and the elderly people calling on the leadership to contemporize for the sake of the young new believers? This would signal a counting of others as more important than ourselves (Phil. 2:3), which comes from the Spirit of the humiliated, exalted King, Christ (Phil. 2:5-11).

When I insist that the rest of the congregation serve as backup singers in my own little nostalgic hit parade of back-home Mississippi hymns, I am worshiping in the spirit all right, but not the Holy Spirit. I am worshiping myself, in the spirit of self-exaltation. The church negates the power of the third temptation when we remind ourselves that we all have this devilish tendency and cast it aside whether in worship planning or missions or budget decisions.

-- Russell Moore, Tempted and Tried (Crossway, 2011), 149-150.

Yes.

Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. (Romans 12:10 ESV)

I swear this wasn't planned, in light of all the conversation around here these days.

Today is our youngest son Blake's 14th birthday, and we were at the grandparents tonight to celebrate. Blake's grandmother got him a Tebow jersey, and, well, watch the video if you're interested in seeing the Tebow jersey celebration.

We're not a sports blog, so I apologize for flooding this place with sports posts the past few days.

That being said, I had to post this: it's been a long, long ten years, but today my Texans clinched the AFC South and their first ever playoff berth. They did it with a dramatic come from behind victory over the Cincinnati Bengals, capped off with a scoring drive led by our third string rookie quarterback. We were also helped by the Titans losing to the Saints.

It was an ugly win, but we'll take it. Congratulations Texans!!!

. . . or this is Divine Intervention baby!

Congratulations to Robert Griffin III, and to Baylor, for winning the Heisman trophy tonight.

My wife went to Baylor and so I've always been a disinterested fan of the school's football team. While we were dating we took in a few Baylor games back in the day and I've always hoped the team would do well. Of course, since eldest son and youngest daughter (and lots and lots of our shekels) started going there, I've become a very interested fan.

Last weekend we went to Waco to watch Baylor play UT. Robert Griffin III had a great game. It's not often that one gets to see greatness in person. Watching RG III play that night as the Bears trounced UT reminded me of when I got to see Lionel Messi play. That was a different sport, but the same display of transcendent talent.

Robert Griffin III is also, by all accounts, a fine young man off the field. My congratulations to him and to Baylor Nation!

From what I understand, Waco is going nuts with joy right now.

You might enjoy reading Dear Void. This brilliant young lady can write some poetry.

This one caught my eye today:

Turn aside the burning blush
let the fire settle from thy smothered eyes.
Let grace like silent snow fall
and cool thy singed soul.
This is truth and grace abundant
that in the midst of despair
is the gentle hand, the turning sound,
the path made straight again.
Step away from the immolation
shame is not your birthright
You are a new generation
and the dawn is a gentle light.

Great testimony from Troy Polamalu:

From National Review Online, The Gospel According To Peanuts:

“We got a call from Coca-Cola,” remembered Melendez. “And they said, ‘Have you and Mr. Schulz ever considered doing a Christmas show with the characters?’ and I immediately said ‘Yes.’ And it was Wednesday and they said, ‘If you can send us an outline by Monday, we might be interested in it.’ So I called Sparky on the phone and told him I’d just sold ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas,’ and he said, ‘What’s that?’ and I said, ‘It’s something you’ve got to write tomorrow.’”

We learned in that American Masters series that Schulz had some ideas of his own for the Christmas special, ideas that didn’t make the network suits very happy. First and foremost, there was no laugh track, something unimaginable in that era of television. Schulz thought that the audience should be able to enjoy the show at its own pace, without being cued when to laugh. CBS created a version of the show with a laugh track added, just in case Schulz changed his mind. Luckily, he didn’t.

The second big battle was waged over voiceovers. The network executives were not happy that the Schulz’s team had chosen to use children to do the voice acting, rather than employing adults. Indeed, in this remarkable world created by Charles Schulz, we never hear the voice of an adult.

The executives also had a problem with the jazz soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi. They thought the music would not work well for a children’s program, and that it distracted from the general tone. They wanted something more . . . well . . . young.

Last but not least, the executives did not want to have Linus reciting the story of the birth of Christ from the Gospel of Luke. The network orthodoxy of the time assumed that viewers would not want to sit through passages of the King James Bible.

There was a standoff of sorts, but Schulz did not back down, and because of the tight production schedule and CBS’s prior promotion, the network executives aired the special as Schulz intended it. But they were certain they had a flop on their hands.

A Charlie Brown Christmas is a glorious achievement. It's hard to imagine it being made today.

I'm thankful that Sparky hung tough, and I hope to catch a showing of A Charlie Brown Christmas sometime this season.

May your Christmas season be joyous and Christ-filled.

We are so utter­ly ordi­nary, so com­mon­place, while we pro­fess to know a Power the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry does not reck­on with. But we are “harmless,” and there­fore unharmed. We are spir­i­tu­al paci­fists, non-militants, con­sci­en­tious objec­tors in this battle-to-the-death with prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers in high places. Meek­ness must be had for con­tact with men, but brass, out­spo­ken bold­ness is required to take part in the com­rade­ship of the Cross. We are “side­lin­ers” — coach­ing and crit­i­ciz­ing the real wrestlers while con­tent to sit by and leave the ene­mies of God unchal­lenged. The world can­not hate us, we are too much like its own. Oh that God would make us dan­ger­ous!

-Jim Elliot

[HT Challies]

Holy Schlamoley . . . what a game!

This guy is defying all the experts. Who would have thought: a 95 yard drive with just minutes to go, and capped off with a Tebow scramble into the end-zone.

Broncos 17, Jets 13.

How Steve Jobs Got Away With Driving With No License Plates

The multitude of mysteries revealed following the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' death now includes one that puzzled car enthusiasts for years: How did Jobs get away with driving without a license plate? It was common knowledge that Jobs would park his Mercedes SL55 AMG in a handicapped spot at Apple's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, with nothing to identify his vehicle other than the tiny barcode that usually rests behind the rear license plate. According to Walter Isaacson's new biography, Jobs wanted to avoid having a plate for privacy reasons; and yet when having a license-less silver Mercedes became a kind of trademark, Jobs kept motoring without one "because I don't."

For years, rumors swirled that Jobs had either won a special dispensation from California authorities or was just daring police to stop him. While the why remains somewhat cloudy, an interview by ITWire with a former Apple security executive reveals the real reason: a little-known loophole in California vehicle laws that gives owners up to six months to get plates for their vehicles.

According to Jon Callas, now chief technical officer of Entrust, Jobs would arrange with his vehicle leasing company to switch out his silver Mercedes every six months with a new, identical model — just another of the complicated and expensive ways Jobs thought differently.