A Thinking Reed

  • Sane repetition

    I see that the Catholic webzine Godspy is up and running again (via Kevin Jones). One particular article I liked was blogger Eve Tushnet’s commendation of repetitive prayer. This hits home for me: In “falling back on” other people’s words I can admit that I can’t express myself very well, and I need help even…

  • Sunday Metal – Grammy edition

    The Grammy awards have been notorious for their obliviousness to what was actually going on in music, going back at least to how long it took them to catch on to this whole “rock ‘n’ roll” thing. And they’ve been particularly lacksidasical in recognizing metal performances, with the first award in the hard rock/metal category…

  • Making room for religious law?

    There’s been a lot of blogospheric hubabaloo about this rather dry and academic lecture given by Rowan Williams on the possibility of recognizing, in some official fashion, religious legal jurisdictions within a pluralistic society. What was reported as the Archbishop appeasing Islamic extremists is, in reality, a nuanced exploration of some significant issues in the…

  • The Buddha and the Christ

    Here’s an interesting piece by a lapsed Catholic who studied Tibetan Buddhism and eventually found his way back to the Catholic Church. He discusses Tibet, and the many misconceptions Westerners have about it, as well as the differences between Buddhism and Christianity. Partly for personal reasons and partly out of curiosity I’ve been delving into…

  • Whose faith? Which rationality?

    In a comment to this post, Eric makes the valuable point that “reason” is not a univocal term. He points out that what some theologians are up to is trying to recover a richer notion of what reason is. He refers to Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Address which called for a kind of “re-Hellenization” of our…

  • Pro-life and pro-Obama

    Interesting post from Frank Schaeffer (son of the famed evangelical guru Francis Schaeffer). Schaeffer’s piece does have a whiff of the Obama-as-messiah meme, though, with its insistence that Obama can lead us to a “spiritual rebirth, a turning away from the false value of consumerism and utilitarianism that have trumped every aspect of human life.…

  • “We don’t want to be found”

    Good Lost recap and comments at the AV Club. (Spoilers ahoy!)

  • Don’t spook the blogger

    I’m hesitant to draw attention to Jennifer‘s low profile return to the world of blogging lest we scare her off, but let’s hope this positive reinforcement will encourage her to continue. 🙂 Now, if Camassia would come back…

  • Friday metal – Machine Head, “Now I Lay Thee Down”

  • Faith, rationality and the common good

    Fr. Chris has a good post defending Jeffrey Stout from Christian neo-traditionalist critiques. I’m no expert on Stout, but I think I’m overall more sympathetic to what I take to be Stout’s side in this debate. Call me an old-fashioned liberal, but I am deeply skeptical about this idea of replacing a shared rationality with…