A Thinking Reed

  • William Placher, RIP

    The well-known teacher and theologian has died at the untimely age of 60. I only knew him through his books, but he was by all accounts a wonderful teacher and a good Christian man. He spent the vast majority of his career at tiny Wabash College in Indiana; as a leading light of Yale-style “postliberal”…

  • Guest post: Sunnydale, 90210

    Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post from the Missus on the important parallels between Beverly Hills 90210 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As some of you may know, the Thinking Reed and I have recently entered the Buffyverse. One of the most wonderful things about the Buffyverse is its near seamless overlap with…

  • Give thanks

    It’s good for you (scientifically proven!). Of course, it’s also meet, right and our bounden duty, in case you needed another reason.

  • Wednesday metal – Opeth, “Porcelain Heart”

    Well, it’s sort of a de facto Friday for many of us.

  • The zen of steer

    Jon Katz writes about his friend Elvis the steer’s spiritual centeredness.

  • Free choice for some

    Catholic Obama supporter Melinda Henneberger makes the case against the “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA), which, it appears, could result in Catholic hosptials (a third of all hospitals in the US, according to Henneberger) shutting their doors rather than being forced to provide abortions. Many of these hospitals rely on Medicade and Medicare funds to…

  • Slow blogging?

    Kind of a cool idea, actually. I don’t necessarily think that more blogging is always better (in case you couldn’t tell), or that “blog in haste, repent at leisure” is necessarily wise. I find that my best posts (or at least the ones I like best) are the ones that I think about a bit…

  • Extremism in the defense of beer

    Great story about the rise of craft brewing in the US, focusing especially on Dogfish Head Brewery in Delaware, maker of various “extreme” beers (really hoppy ales, beers with offbeat ingredients, etc.). For my birthday I treated myself to a 4-pack of their 90 minute IPA. Yummy stuff. The article, though, becomes a kind of…

  • Gourmands, aesthetics, and ethics

    If more proof was needed that I’m not hip, I’m sorry to say that I never read David Foster Wallace–and indeed only vaguely knew who he was–before his suicide this past September. But I recently came across this incredible piece of his published in 2004 in Gourmet magazine. Incredible not least because it was actually…

  • Thought for the day

    …theology, an enterprise that, despite the oftentimes homicidal urgency Christians attach to it, has yet to save anybody. What saves us is Jesus, and the way we lay hold of that salvation is by faith. And faith is something that […] I shall resolutely refuse to let mean anything other than trusting Jesus. It is…