Safe Haven

I recently had a chance to participate in a fundraising gala for a pro-life organization I really believe in. Several friends and I really enjoyed it, were inspired, and gave what seemed right, as we were able. At the same time, you note I'm sure my disaffection with the current forms of even mainstream "conservative" ideology. I'll never be "the Left," as it were. There is no David Brock-like conversion coming. Yours truly might make a big change over the course of years or a decade, but I'm a writer and an extrovert; I'm gonna telegraph it, if so. I digress. The point being, personhood won't change. No sob story rooted in consequentialism would make even one abortion acceptable. No other heart-wrenching identity crisis makes any anti-human (thus, anti-Catholic) ideology tolerable. Yet I'm reminded of something Archbishop Sheen said, in paraphrase: If a person listens to the Church, he can believe dozens of foolish things besides, without ...

I can tell you this: It's pretty hard to get your hands on the eponymous major label debut from this band. But Darth Bezos can get you anything. The music isn't as old as I thought, but the original songs appear to have been composed between 1994-1997. I just had flashbacks to my early days as a Christian in the late '90's, and their music was resonating well into the early aughts. Sorrow and struggle, sin and wandering, changes the tenor of everything we hear from them. It still has that pretentious charm of a Serious Band Doing Serious And Real Jesus Songs. It's like they would wink and smile at the prospect of not being played on Christian radio. That's kind of the point. I have had some negative and probably uncharitable reactions to Derek Webb and some of his songs, but I'm still a fan. He's an intriguing vocalist, and has apparently never lacked for something to say. The political and cultural fault-lines being what they are, it's inevitabl...

At the risk of glib bitterness, I knew there was too much happiness the last couple of months. We know how this goes. There must be a holy way of waiting for the other shoe to drop. If you find it, let me know. I've taken joy in the cross before, so I'd have to suppose I will again. Not right now. It seems like a sick joke. Death is horrific, wrong, and sad, but there are definitely sorrows worse than death. When our loved ones die, most times, they don't mean to leave. Death is a thing that snatches us, sometimes without warning. This thing is different. What do you do when someone you love says, "I don't want to be close to you anymore"? There is no way to feel anything other than broken, or defective. We men, we want to fix it. What should I change? Did I somehow become a pale imitation of myself? It seems like what I have given is lost, never to return. This is where our heroic notions of giving without expecting anything in return seem to die. It'...