George Grant…

“Attacks on great cultures come first through the denigration of language.”

Chrissy and I are better Americans, personally, probably for having digested the 8+ hour HBO Miniseries John Adams.  To be immersed in the rich language, sweet passion for country, rich honor, deep integrity, blood-earnestness were sobering and convicting.

John Adams is probably less of a hero now, having learned more of him.  As an American and a President, he was a bulwark.  As a father, he was too absent to be effective.  Would America be less American today if he hadn’t, essentially, forsaken his children during their youth?

Perhaps McCullough left out a warm religious fervor and fatherly affection that were indeed present that would endear me again.  Have you seen the series, and what were your thoughts?

“No, Posterity, you will never know how much it cost us to preserve your freedom.  I hope that you will make good use of it.  If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.”

From Blog and Mablog,

“Or how much curious and loving attention was expended by the first man who looked hard enough at the insides of trees, the entrails of cats, the hind ends of horses and the juice of pine tree to realize he could turn them all into the first fiddle. No doubt his wife urged him to get up and do something useful. I am sure that he was a stalwart enough lover of things to pay no attention at all to her nagging; but how wonderful it would have been if he had known what we know now about his dawdling. He could have silenced her with the greatest riposte of all time: Don’t bother me; I am creating the possibility of the Bach unaccompanied sonatas” (Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, p. 19).

Sweet medicine from Nancy Wilson.

US Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire is here openly heckled at during a service in England.  He seemed to have acceptance of the crowd.

These are two lines of the song that the congregation begins singing.

“Life is naught without Thee; aid us in our strife;
Make us more than conqu’rors, through Thy deathless love:”

From John Piper’s Four Mistakes I Hope You Don’t Make…

“I don’t feel excited when I hear a question like: “You want to be a firefighter? Why are you in college?” “You want to be a homemaker? Why are you in college?”

“We’re in school to see a whole panorama of life that comes out in all manifestations of disciplines in the hope that all these beams of light refracted in human minds will lead us to the source of all things so that we know him better.

“Every time I send Talitha off to school—she’s in the 5th grade—I try to remember to connect for her what she’s about to do today with Jesus. And not in a superficial way like, if you know this fact it might be useful in witnessing, though that’s true and wonderful. But rather, if you study math, you’re going to know God better. I promise you. As you advance through the complexities of math—from 5th grade to Calculus—you will find out things about the nature of the mind of God that you would not get any other way. It’s the same thing with the way language works. Same thing with processes in history. Same thing in politics and social studies. And art.”

Animation + free + aware of your need + aware of the importance = semi-palatable.

[My apologies to Farmer for my half-promotion of such an unerudite method.]

Big story #1:  Zondervan is being sued for the content of it’s Bibles.

Big story #2:  A reporter found the library (as admitted in the video story).

I love my wife, Ecclesiastes, the Gospel, my boys.  I really, really like my iPhone and classical education.  Get yours on 7/11/08.

…and then found this quote by James Jordan,

“The key to health is obedience and faith, not mechanical observance of health techniques. Valuable as exercise, good diet, and the like may be, they are not delineated in God’s revealed law.”