Safe Haven

5. Keep your sports "hate" confined to the field. That guy you hate inevitably gives half his salary to a children's hospital or something. 4. Win or lose, the guy who hasn't done anything all year will be involved in the crucial play. Please just trust me on this. 3. The championship teams always face adversity. Always. If your team hasn't, they're going to lose when nobody expects them to. 2. The only thing that beats a Feel Good Story is a team of ruthless dream-killers, who hate stories like that.  The St. Louis Cardinals are quintessentially this team. Don't let the fan base, smiles, and ignorance of the Eastern media fool you. Ruthless, most years. I have come to terms with this. After all, I admire the Patriots in football. Mike Matheny and the staff have started wearing hoodies. Coincidence? I think not. 1. Momentum is real, no matter what the experts say.

I actually hate agreeing with Mark Shea.  But what do you want me to do? I recognize that the cultivation of expertise in any one field must be ever and always against the backdrop and with the overriding consideration of the dignity of the human person. Just imagine you are the highest cleric in Argentina; you have spent the balance of your career among the poorest of the poor, in a society so stratified, Adam Smith himself would cry, "Outrage!" Now how do you feel about recent discussions concerning economics? The talking heads in this nation are playing a game, a word game, a game of "gotcha!" But the Vicar of Christ has bigger fish to fry, if you will pardon the pun. Yes, expertise tends to increase the tension between specialized knowledge and wise counsel. But that's the point: Great ideas are built on creative tension.

I love Christ and Pop Culture . Me and Alan Noble are buddies on the interwebs. I told him I read the magazine religiously, and I mean that in the creepy Catholic sense. Even when they annoy me, I can't stop reading it. In many important ways, I'm still an evangelical. (You could legitimately argue that I'm still Reformed in some non-doctrinal, non-ecclesial ways, too, and I think that's good. That tradition holds a non-negligible influence over that expression of evangelical piety, and it will probably stay that way.) Every time Alan writes a post looking for new writers, I punch myself, because justification by faith alone is a deal-breaker over there, and I'm a bloody Catholic; I can't affirm it. But I want to write for them almost as much as I want to be on The Journey Home, which is a lot. I need you to understand that. I love what they do. Let me just get that out of the way. But they are annoyingly temperate, at a time when we really don't need that...

I've always loved this song.  I'll take the risk of sounding inclusivist or Balthasarian or whatever horrible thing you want to call me. Because if you don't take the risk of sounding a little hippie-ish about the mercy of God, you don't understand it. We're on the eve of the Nativity of the Lord, but the Paschal Mystery is never far away. Jesus was born to die. For us. Because He loves us. His love swallows up everything it touches. You just have to let it, let Him. Merry Christmas, "'Cause tonight's the night the world begins again."

Are you sure you don't want to read Called to Communion ? Ahem. I like being Jason Kettinger; it's generally awesome. But there have been days when I wanted to be Casey Chalk. Just sayin.'

A resonance shaking the soul like I have not known, nor could have seen, has taken place. What sort of music is this? What kind of reply must I make? I only know that I heard it, and it was beautiful. There is a song I desire to sing, the words come ready to mind, but I do not sing in haste; I do not sing of my own accord. I long to hear it again, to listen closely, that I might sing well, that I might find my place in the chorus. It is not for me to write the song. The melody, the time are not mine, and they will never be.