All posts in February 2006

Joey’s dad died yesterday. If you knew him, your heart aches and you miss him; if you didn’t know him, then people you care about miss him so much that it makes you feel bad. Margaret and I spent bits of the wedding weekend with him, and found him to be every bit the graceful,…

Or “anticipated search terms” or something. I’m filling out the Author Information sheets from Fortress, and one of the things they ask is “Please list ten key words that will assist a customer when searching for your book on a web site. These ten key words should be different than the words found in the…

Yes, “on a jet plane” — but there’s no need to sing the song. We had a marvelous visit, and enjoyed keeping track of Pippa’s adventures in Maine, working on common academic interests, and generally sinking our teeth into a weekend together alone. We’ll connect up again next weekend when we go to see Si…

I used to have three taglines for this blog: All times are local. Local times may vary. Minutes do not expire. drawn from various advertisements and warnings. Our family loves pondering the metaphysics implied by claims such as these. Margaret reports that Nate spotted another such line in an advertisement for a Rochester auto merchant:…

I went out to O’Hare Airport to pick up the most wonderful theologian in the world (my fantastic wife Margaret), but her plane was delayed. I took the opportunity to pace back and forth the length of Terminal 1, listening to tunes (i.e., podwalking). As I neared Baggage Carousel One, I ran into Jim Poling,…

I think that I shan’t come to a point where my reflections on “justice” both measure up to the standard of deliberation and soundness that the subject requires, and avoid some besetting issues pertinent mostly to my particular situation. Instead of just dropping the topic, though, or waiting till I have time to develop a…

“In passing” is how Steve and Pippa evidently encountered one another at L. L. Bean’s last Sunday. I love the Web! Michael Bérubé is shamelessly campaigning for “Worst Professor in America,” and last time I checked he was steam-rollering other candidates. I feel a little chagrin on behalf of the true-red lefties over whom Bérubé…

Yesterday I pushed some words through my keyboard into the book review and the sermon, and I think they turn out okay (I’ll post the sermon below the jump). It made for a long day of typing, deleting, staring off into space, and so on (and the “day” didn’t quite end till “wee hours of…

I spent most of today struggling over a review of Philip F. Esler’s New Testament Theology: Communion and Community, a book that impresses me a lot, both positively and negatively. I’m trying to hit the correct balance between appreciating the book’s insights and identifying the book’s flaws, a job made trickier by the fact that…

Hat tip to Steve for pointing us to Literally, a Web Log. We had some “literally” problems in our family earlier this winter, so this site delighted Margaret and me. Maybe Si won’t enjoy it as much, though.

The women in my life have not forgotten me, and by their remembrance have enkindled warm thoughts to fend off the cold days of their absence. Margaret sent me a love note paraphrased from Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica: We can signify God, using the understanding we draw from creatures, although our names for God cannot…

Two delightful things happened today. First, Margaret decided we ought to be together tomorrow weekend, so she’s coming up to Evanston for a long weekend. Second (though earlier), David Efird followed up our earlier conversation about cartoons, etc., with some modal-logic notes on my post on God and games. I had observed in passing that…