I Am Not Hamlet

My mother died this past August.  If any of my extended family reads this they'll instantly accuse me of trying to score pity points for myself. I'm not. If you have no sympathy for me over the passing of my mother...so be it.  I'm not going to plead for it.  I'm just stating the fact, that she like Jacob Marley, is as dead as a doornail. It happens to the best of us. Anyway, in the course of my mother's rapid decline and passing, I was disowned by two members of my family. Were we fighting over who gets Mom's treasures?  No.  Were we vicious because we each thought we deserved the lion's share of the inheritance?  Hardly. No, my family went batshit crazy over the way I processed her death. Courtesy of Creative Commons That's it.  No revelations of family secrets.  No bickering over cash, cars, or mansions. Nope.  It was because of my less-than- polished  bourgeois way of expression. I was cursed (literally!) a...

Again, this link is a month old.  Yet, I have to say I'm quite proud of this piece and feel the faint rumblings (or is that simply gas?) of a book.  Time will tattle, I suppose.  Anyway, tell me what you think of this piece.  Subscribe to Stand Magazine while you're at it. Love Is Action from the Stand Magazine blog.

This post is almost two months old, but life gets in the way of our plans, doesn't it?  Anyway, a friend of mine is starting a men's magazine (No! Not that kind of magazine.)   Stand: the magazine for men who give a damn is taking subscriptions for the inaugural issue.  Consider subscribing and checking it out here . I wrote a blog piece about, what else?, local ecology. You can find that piece here . Enjoy!

I wrote this review for the Englewood Review of Books back in December, but it was only published a few weeks ago.   Not God's Type is the story of an atheist's journey to theism, then to Evangelical Christianity and finally to Catholicism.  It wasn't bad. Follow this link to the review.

I've written a fair amount of book reviews--a few of which weren't even self-published--and now, after my master's project has been circulated a bit, I have a third-party review of it!  Best of all, it's favorable.  You can read the review here .  If you'd like to get a copy, simply go to www.noisetrade.com and look up Greening God's Earth.  You can get it for free or leave a tip to help continue the work. Thanks again to the Englewood Review of Books for the review. Courtesy Creative Commons

Here's the second (and final) post I've written for Ignatian Solidarity Network and their Lenten devotional blog.  Thanks again to Ken Homan. We're more than half-way through Lent.  If you've come this far...you can make it.

The following link will take you to the Renewing the Face of the Earth Lenten devotional series.  It's an arm of the Ignatian Solidarity Network .   Here's my contribution.  I've got another entry due in another week or so.  Let me know what you think.

Most Western Christians are Augustinian in some way and I can't deny that myself, even though I have trouble with the man's outlook in ways I can't fully articulate.  Still, the Western church didn't make him a saint for nothing (in the East he's known as Blessed Augustine--they never fully warmed up to him).  Anyway, here's a piece from his gigantic magnum opus (and this was hand written, mind you) City of God book 22, chapter 22. This life of ours--if a life so full of such great ills can properly be called a life--bears witness to the fact that, from its very start, the race of mortal men has been a race condemned.  Think, first, of that dreadful abyss of ignorance from which all error flows and so engulfs the sons of Adam in a darksome pool that no one can escape without the toll of toils and tears and fears.  Then, take our very love for all those things that prove so vain and poisonous and breed so many heartaches, troubles, griefs, and fears; such insan...