The weather has turned on us, like a girlfriend (I’ve read about such people) who suddenly won’t talk to you, and you ask her what’s wrong and she says, “If you don’t know, there’s no point in me saying anything.”

What I mean is, the weather turned to the winter side today. Oh, it’s not freezing (not quite). And it’s not snowing (although Lileks says a few flakes fell this morning). But the winter attitude is there. We’ve got a wind, sharpened with a carborundum stone. It wants to blow my hat away. It wants to give me a cold, or the flu if I let my guard down. And in combination with sunset coming an hour earlier now, we all know it’s time to stop lying to ourselves and to admit that summer was an aberration, a parole. This is the real world. This is Life, unpainted and raw.

Once again we have offended God with our ingratitude. That’s why we schedule a day at the end of the month for giving thanks, as a student gives the teacher an apple or a box of chocolates toward the end of term, in hopes that his previous slacking will be forgotten.



Iowahawk has posted scans of a book by Munro Leaf, most famous for the pacifist classic, Ferdinand the Bull. In 1942, Leaf sang a much more martial tune.

Dinesh D’Souza offers a spirited rebuttal today to the argument that “Hitler was a Christian,” noting quite properly that Hitler hated Christianity but adored Darwin.

In my novel Wolf Time, I noted that Nazism was compounded of Darwinism and Romanticism. I’m a big fan (as was C. S. Lewis) of much of the stuff that went on in the Romantic period in art and literature. That was the age when the Icelandic sagas gained thousands of readers, when the Grimms collected peasant fairy tales and Edvard Grieg worked Norwegian folk music into haunting orchestral works. Various European ethnic groups rediscovered their cultural histories, and—and this was very important—began to look at the common person, the peasant, as something more than a beast of burden. This helped to advance education and democracy.

But there was a downside. The celebration of the ethnic too easily overflowed into plain racism and xenophobia. The Norwegian, reading an Icelandic saga and saying, “We are as great as the Romans,” often went on to say, “…and we’re much better than the Poles.” The Darwinian idea of the survival of the fittest provided a scientific veneer for theories of racial superiority, and Nazism was born.

I’ve read that there are strong elements of neo-Nazism among some (not all) groups of Asatru (Thor and Odin worshippers) today. I’ve known several Asatru. We used to have them in our Viking Age Society, before our Great Schism. Some of them were people I liked, and some I didn’t like so much. I never heard any of them express racist views, but I never discussed the issue with any of them, either. So I can’t accuse them in this matter.

But I will say this. There is, within the Christian scriptures, ample authority for rejecting any view of human superiority on the basis of race. I see no such authority within the traditional documents of Norse mythology. I think that the Asatru (and all moderns who reject Christianity) are depending on the basic goodness of themselves and their friends to protect them from racism.

I don’t believe in the basic goodness of myself or my friends. I believe in the restraint provided by the authority of the Word of God.

Yesterday, of course, I should have titled my post “Happy All Saints’ Eve,” or “Happy All Hallows’ Eve.” Eve, not Day. Today’s the Day. Today is the Feast of All Hallows. I should have noticed that at the time, but I often miss things, don’t I?

S. T. Karnick has a nice tribute to the festival on his blog here, along with a video link and everything.

We ought to pay more attention to All Saints’ Day. You don’t have to be a Catholic to believe that we’re part of the universal Body of Christ, and that “a great cloud of witnesses” is watching from Heaven, like spectators at a ball game, cheering us on (as the author of Hebrews writes). Or, to use another metaphor, that we are part of a great host (“Like a mighty army moves the Church of God”) that’s on a long march through history. The army’s so big that we can only see a small part of it from where we stand in time. I often slump into a worldly point of view, imagining that I’m standing at the end of Christian history. All Saints’ Day helps us remember that we’ve been through worse before, and it sets up good examples for us to follow. This is a day to pick up a book on church history and meditate on the sufferings and victories of our forefathers in grace.

Here’s a bit of a hymn by Charles Wesley that pleases me very much:

One family, we dwell in Him;

One church above, beneath;

Though now divided by the stream,–

The narrow stream of death.

One army of the living God,

To His command we bow:

Part of His host has crossed the flood.

And part is crossing now.

Martin Luther posted these comments: “This unbridled preaching of indulgences makes it difficult for learned men to guard the respect due to the pope against false accusations, or at least from the keen criticisms of the laity.

They ask, e.g.: Why does not the pope liberate everyone from purgatory for the sake of love (a most holy thing) and because of the supreme necessity of their souls? This would be morally the best of all reasons. Meanwhile he redeems innumerable souls for money, a most perishable thing, with which to build St. Peter’s church, a very minor purpose.” Continue reading Today in History →

The docks are on dry land in Lake Lanier. Why does God withhold the rain? Why does he send the wildfire? It’s for the same reason my car doesn’t start sometimes. The Lord calls us to trust him.

Sure, there are responsible things we can do to help sometimes. I don’t know what we could do about the drought other than conserve water now that we’re in the middle of it, but proper forest management can cut back on wildfires, and if a mechanic could discern my car trouble, we could fix that too. But in all trouble, especially the natural disaster type, God’s message is to trust him.

Even the sparrow finds a home,

and the swallow a nest for herself,

where she may lay her young,

at your altars, O LORD of hosts,

my King and my God. (Psalm 84:3 ESV)

So have no fear . . .

How often does the Lord tell his people not to fear, and how much fear do we, Christians in America, struggle with? I speak for myself here. Why am I afraid of nothing? And here I claim to trust the Lord with my life.

This October 31 is the 490th anniversary of the day Martin Luther nailed a few minor concerns about the Catholic Church to a cathedral door. For that reason, I offer this link to quotes from Luther’s guide to prayer.

I have wanted to be a man of prayer for a long time, but it is one of the hardest things I try.

Charles Colson writes, “Darwinist accounts of human morality bear such little resemblance to the way real people live their lives that the late philosopher Michael Stove, an atheist himself, called them a ‘slander against human beings.’ . . . Nietzsche would laugh—and wonder why they don’t make atheists like they used to.”

One of the things The Most Reverend Henry Luke Orombi, Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, said tonight to a packed sanctuary was “Jesus of Nazareth is the only person who draws people to himself. The church must lift him up so He can draw all men to himself.” I was blessed to sing “We are God’s People,” “Shine, Jesus, Shine,” and “Christ Shall Have Dominion” with Presbyterians and Anglicans. It’s too easy to doubt the faith of those unlike me, especially with news of terrible things in the other denominations. It’s too easy to broadbrush without learning any details about individual congregations. But tonight we celebrated Jesus in unity under the teaching of a man, from halfway around the world, who is just like us.

Via World Views, this fascinating article by the English writer and physician Theodore Dalrymple, on the question of whether religious people are, or are not, actually nicer people than the secular kind.

You won’t agree with everything, but it’s a fascinating snapshot.