Reflections on God … Man … Life
Thoughts on history and the historical profession. Clio is the muse of history–this category title is a play on that concept.
I’ve never read any of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novels. His Gulag Archipelago has been sitting on my bookshelf for a couple of decades at least. Yes, I’ve glanced at it a few times, but to my utter shame, I’ve not taken the time to digest it. My only excuse is the volume of other reading that has always been either more enticing or more needed at the time. I do plan to read it, fitting it in somewhere between Dante’s Divine… Read more »
I receive daily stories from the Christian History Institute about the history of the Church and those who served Christ well in their lives. I particularly like the ones that go back in the very early years and inform me of great figures in church history that I had never heard of previously. Here’s one of those, which I hope will be an inspiration as you begin your work week. SAINT AND BISHOP Eligius from Aquitaine (in the area that… Read more »
I like to spice up my classroom presentations with appropriate cartoons. In my post yesterday, I mentioned some of my favorite comic/cartoon sources: “Peanuts,” “Calvin and Hobbes,” “Mallard Fillmore.” I failed to mention another one that deserves recognition—Gary Larson’s “The Far Side.” Larson’s humor is often zany, but so much the better when he chooses to rewrite history. Now, normally I’m not a fan of revising history without solid evidence, but for the sake of humor, I can laugh along… Read more »
Finals week is upon my students and me. Another semester nears an end. Naturally, I am relieved, but I do enjoy the teaching. When students ask which courses are my favorites, I have to say I like them all. Yet there are some that usually stand out because of my particular interests: my course on C. S. Lewis is one, as is the course on Whittaker Chambers. Then there’s the one I just completed called “Ronald Reagan and Modern American… Read more »
When is compromise right? When is it wrong? When I look at historical compromises, I try to apply this rule: A compromised principle leads to unrighteousness, but a principled compromise is a step closer to the principle’s ideal. Let’s take the Constitutional Convention as an example. The delegates who comprised the convention that led to our current Constitution had to grapple with a number of controversial issues. The two most prominent were how to carry out proper representation and how… Read more »
On the morning of April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln died in a house across the street from Ford’s Theater. The pandemonium of the night before still resonated through Washington, DC, and the news would soon spread throughout the country, both North and South. John Hay, Lincoln’s personal secretary, recalls hearing these words from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton: The nation mourned, and it wasn’t just the North that did so. Many in the South knew this was a tragedy for… Read more »
I was reading in Psalm 39 this morning and this section jumped out at me: Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure. Thinking about my mortality has become more prominent lately. Not that I’m in bad health or anticipating… Read more »