Nonconformity in exurbia.

I live in an exurban new-urbanist "planned community", where all the houses conform to a century old design language called "American Craftsman" with a muted and narrow color pallet of dusty pastel earth tones, and all the houses have front porches and white (vinyl) picket fences. The HOA is very restrictive. Regimented nostalgia-tinged order.

I'm a rebellious sort. To differentiate myself from my neighbors, I subscribe to a daily newspaper. I appear to be the only one on my block. I expect the HOA to send notice.

iBest

Best photo I've ever taken with my iPhone 3GS. The pits at Smitty's Market in Lockhart, Texas.

Good shot.

The door is ajar.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

- John Updike, "Seven Stanzas at Easter"

Empty Religion

We need to listen again to the biblical criticism of religion.  No book, not even by Marx and his followers, is more scathing of empty religion than the Bible.  The prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries BC were outspoken in their denunciation of the formalism and hypocrisy of Israelite worship.  Jesus then applied their critique to the Pharisees of his day: 'These people ... honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me' (Is. 29:13; Mk. 7:6).  And this indictment of religion by the Old Testament prophets and by Jesus is uncomfortably applicable to us and our churches today.  Too much of our worship is ritual without reality, form without power, fun without fear, religion without God.

--From "The Contemporary Christian" (Leicester and Downers Grove: IVP, 1992), p. 228.

- John R. W. Stott

The Man Without a Country

The Man Without a Country - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

and...

The real Philip Nolan.

Confession is good for the soul.

I am a Centrist Christian Democrat (ick, for two parts of the indentifier).

Why? Because while I believe in mankind's innate freedom (Free Will), I also believe in mankind's innate freedom (Free Will).

Left to our own resources, we (mankind) will rape and pillage.  Any attempt at correction will ultimately fail. But try we must (to prevent rape and pillage).

Have a nice day.

See what big letters I am using?

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”

- Soren Kierkegaard