I don’t know what church did this, but apparently it’s in Texas, and this clip is pretty cool.
To our Jewish friends (we have at least one), greetings and best wishes.
Tip: Moe Lane at Red State, by way of Wizbang.
DVD Review: Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King
I finally broke down and joined Netflix a while back, and am taking the opportunity to catch up on some Viking (and Viking-related) films I haven’t seen before. This weekend I watched the European made-for-TV movie, Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King. As I understand it, it was originally broadcast in longer form, as a two-parter, so this American version is missing some material.
I found it a somewhat enjoyable, correspondingly frustrating film. In a nutshell, the production values were excellent, and some of the acting was good. Unfortunately, in a strange dramatic inverted pyramid, the better the actor, the smaller (in general) was their part. Continue reading DVD Review: Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King
Pray for the Russians
Remember how you felt after September 11? Remember how you prayed for people you would never know? Let’s recall something of that motivation and pray for the people of Moscow.
The Words of 2000 A.D.
Merriam-Webster has a list of ten word what define our decade, that is, the decade what just passed us by. I believe these words were looked up the most through the dictionaries services.
1. rogue (uncontrollable)
2. locavore (one who eats local food)
3. integrity (moral wholeness)
4. staycation (at home while out of the office)
5. partisan (I’m too angry to define it)
6. Google (search)
7. insurgent (“to rise up”)
8. bailout (see partisan)
9. Pandemic (broader than an epidemic disease)
10. Carbon footprint (farting)
By slight contrast, here’s their list of words from the 90s.
Fighting for Purity
The Anchoress talks about the scandal, if that’s the right word for it, in the news over abuse in the Roman Catholic church. She states:
Pope Benedict has taken ownership and control over a heavy burden that his predecessor was too ill to manage. As detailed in this piece by John Allen, Benedict’s time-lapsed clarity on this issue has inspired him to do passionate and done profound work, in order to bring the church to repentance for these sins. I’ll never forget one of his earliest speeches as pope, when he vowed to rid the church if “the filth.” He has taken resignations from bishops, presided over substantial and enforced reforms and has personally met and ministered to the victims, who need not only validation, not only justice, but also the healing ministry of a shepherd who loves his flock.
Between the Pages: Bookselling
The invaluable Roy Jacobsen has a daughter bookselling and blogging now. Her name is Patricia Schnase, and here’s a post of her tips for a more pleasant experience for everyone at the local bookstore.
God's Battalions, by Rodney Stark
Sad to say, it is no surprise that the massacre of Antioch is barely reported in many recent Western histories of the Crusades. Steven Runciman gave it eight lines, Hans Eberhard Mayer gave it one, and Christopher Tyerman, who devoted several pages to lurid details of the massacre of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, dismissed the massacre of Antioch in four words. Karen Armstrong devoted twelve words to reporting this massacre, which she then blamed on the crusaders since it was their dire threat that had created a “new Islam” with a “desperate determination to survive.” Armstrong also noted that because Baibars [the Mamluk commander] was a patron of the arts, he “was not simply a destroyer . . . [but also] a great builder.”
This excerpt from page 232 of Rodney Stark’s God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades
He identifies four great lies that have become common wisdom in recent decades, all of which (he insists) are demonstrably false: Continue reading God's Battalions, by Rodney Stark
Dvorak's Slavonic Dances #7
This is not the melody from Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances
The most important message of all, simply delivered
I can’t find a way to imbed this, but it’s a very short graphic video on what’s missing in today’s Protestantism.
Courtesy of Rev. Paul T. McCain at Cyberbrethren.
Dickinson: Poetic Leadership
Roger Lundin, the Blanchard Professor of English at Wheaton College, talks about the poetic language of leadership.
“Q: You describe Emily Dickinson’s work as part of a stereotypically Protestant move away from talking about God with regard to external things toward focusing on internal things. Do you think the move toward looking for God internally is related to a modern distrust for institutions?”
Lundin replies:
It has to do with something that Alexis de Tocqueville wrote almost 200 years ago in “Democracy in America.” He said that the American is either occupied with a very puny and insignificant thing, i.e. himself, or with some vast subject: nature, society, God, the universe. He said the space between that small thing and that vast other is empty. Democracy drives people to an intensely inward focus. It looks at the outside world as this vast, indifferent other. That space between [the insignificant and the vast subjects] is mediating life: it’s churches, schools, politics and social communities.
People who lead well are often people who have done that intense interior work, but you’re never effective in public leadership if you’re constantly reflecting and constantly, in a sense, absenting yourself. Thoreau said in “Walden,” “I’m aware of myself in a double sense.” He said, “I am both an actor in the human drama, and the one who stands back and observes myself and others in action, so that I’m both in the stream of life and standing outside of the stream of life.”