Safe Haven

Baseball According to Me Baseball is the greatest sport ever created. Baseball fans don’t have to hear the debate on this; they know I’m correct. Briefly, let me say why. Baseball transcends itself as to be more than the game in all its beauty (but that is indeed formidable). At key moments in our lives, many people can point to a baseball game as the backdrop, or the fulcrum for a memory. Think of ‘Good Will Hunting’, a film that communicates part of its central message through baseball. I won’t give that away; watch for it the next time you view the movie. One of my favorite movies, Field of Dreams, communicates both the majesty of the game and its possibility for serving as a vehicle for meta-narrative. It is not simply old men waxing poetic when they speak of baseball as a cohesive force, uniting friends and family. That sentiment is entirely true. James Earl Jones delivered perhaps the greatest monologue in a movie that wasn’t about Jesus in ‘Field of Dreams.’ Even speaking the co

I'm not good at this blogging game. Thoughts worth writing about are as transient as the sunlight these days here in Missouri. It's been rainy and cold 5 days in a row. I know what they say: Keep writing! But I've never been able. Maybe I have the mind of the quintessential professional writer; I'm too proud to write only for myself, and too worried about others' opinions to write even when it sucks. I'm going to say 'sucks' on a Christian blog, and I dare the word-fascists to get angry about it. I care about holiness too. But that's the kind of silliness that makes the world around us think we're nuts, and we deserve it on that one. God's not an old man in the sky keeping score on a clipboard. If you censor your own language believing that a minor alteration in speech will in any way hide your true feelings from God, or improve your standing with Him, then you are misguided indeed. Certain situations are good times for self-censorship, other

This piece was meant to answer whether radicals in the 1960s were victims of circumstance, or whether the beliefs contained internal contradictions that made for failure. Thanks to David Horowitz for his autobiography Radical Son: A Generational Oddysey, which provided the backdrop for this response. JK What Happened to Liberalism? Radicalism itself (whether from the left or the right) is by definition the suggestion that ordinary electoral means are inadequate to achieve desired goals. To be radical in the truest sense is to hold that the United States cannot redress the grievances of its people in any form, or that it in no way represents the people it governs. It cannot be equated with liberalism, because the United States was being governed during the most relevant part of the 1960s (1961-69) by liberals. One could possibly claim that those Democrats were not authentically liberal; however, Kennedy began the rudiments of the Great Society right away, and Johnson oversaw the biggest

It was a bitter loss in sports for me, just 45 minutes ago. The Lady Vols of Tennessee, making their 16th trip to the Final Four in the last 31 years, went down to the Michigan State Spartans, 68-64. Tennessee was amazing on the offensive glass, building a 16-point lead in the second half. The Vols' shooting cooled off at the outset of the run by MSU, and the inside post players started making plays. Shyra Ely will likely be partly blamed, as she had another mediocre night in a huge game. Let's digress from this game, and let me talk about legendary coach Pat Summitt. Coach Summitt has been the chief in Knoxville for 31 years, the first as a player-coach at the age of 22. She has captured 6 NCAA titles. She currently is the all-time leader in wins in college basketball, men's or women's, passing the great Dean Smith of North Carolina. Including tonight's loss, Tennessee is 882-172 (.837) under Coach Summitt. Rumors fly at this very moment that the iconic coach may j

Sometimes, academics really get on my nerves. I've been in college 7 years, so we're not talking a few isolated experiences here. Anyway, have you ever had an instructor or teaching assistant who was more attuned to what he or she didn't want as an answer on an essay exam, rather than a satisfactory answer? And they say things like, "If you write x, I'm gonna get mad." Pray tell, what would make you happy? They don't know. And neither do I. I've gotta go. Terry, I got all your e-mails; I'm sorry I didn't reply. You're not missing much.