This is a fun little video I put together for KidsCOR. This last month they did a series entitled “Is That Really in the Bible?”, which looked at some of the stranger stories in the Bible. As I was coming up with the concept, I noticed that Balaam and the Talking Donkey was one of…
read moreI recently finished reading Barry Strauss’ The Battle of Salamis, which is an enthralling account of the epic naval encounter between the Hellenic League of Athenian, Spartan and other Grecian city-state navies and the Persian forces under the command of King Xerxes. Strauss devotes considerable attention to describing the trireme, which was the standard battleship…
read moreOn Thursday night I had some time to actually sit down and attempt do something art-related that didn’t have anything to do with a computer, which was a fairly refreshing change of pace. I started with a very vague notion of using pencils for this art piece, but initially I was going to use them…
read morethe sixth day the earth is aroused from its sleep by uncounted feet upon its back as life discovers its form in numberless shapes and sizes the cooing and baying and roaring resonates the gift that fills each creature’s lungs if only to find a face the Almighty makes the clay into a king if…
read moreMegan and I finally got a prime lens this week- Canon’s 50mm 1.4. We end up doing a lot of photography for Megan’s food site- The Fresh Fridge- so getting a good prime lens was an inevitability. Our apartment, while having a lovely view of a tiny forested area with a creek immediately behind it,…
read moreThis edition of my church fathers paraphrases comes from St. Gregory Nazianzus. Gregory was born around A.D. 325, right as the Council of Nicea was in full swing. His father Gregory had been a pagan but had converted due to the influence of his wife Nonna. The elder Gregory became bishop of Nazianzus in 329…
read morethe fifth day the untamed eternal wind began to sweep over the rocks and the grass as the giver of motion brought movement to our world potency gave way to form multiplicity stood victorious among our first friends who would not share our voice but would share our fate, some who would even bear our…
read moreToday Megan and I went to the Overland Park Arboretum for a lovely walk. We bundled up under myriad layers of clothes, and by the time we got there I was so warm (I had on a thermal shirt, a regular long-sleeve cotton shirt and a hoodie, along with thermal socks and a rather thick…
read moreIt is Good Friday. You bow your head in prayer in the utter stillness of the early morning, as the darkness envelops you as a blanket, the flickering of candles the only bulwark from its over-powering presence. On the tomb-like chill of the air floats the faint and lingering fragrance of incense, like the dew…
read morethe fourth day the memory in the mind of the world will forever look with fondness upon the day when God taught the universe to sing- their voices carried upon the wild eternal wind to be burning images of the light the night was born under the borrowed rays of the moon in the cool…
read moreThis installment of my church fathers paraphrases comes from Clement of Rome, who is considered the first of the ‘Apostolic Fathers.’ Clement I was the fourth bishop of Rome (after Linus and Cletus) and lived within the lifetime of the apostles. St. Irenaeus reports that he “saw the blessed Apostles and conversed with them, and…
read moreThis beautiful example of Ambrosian chant is Nicolas Gombert’s arrangement of the classic responsory Media Vita in Morte Sumus, which translated essentially means in the midst of life we are in death. It is generally sung during Lent at the office of Compline, and is reputed to have moved St. Aquinas to tears.1 The Latin…
read more++ Love, which is the highest level of union, only takes root in the growing independence of the lovers; the union between God and the world reveals, in the very nearness it creates between these two poles of being, the ever greater difference between created being and the essentially incomparable God.1 The Council of Chalcedon…
read morethe third day dusty feet belie calloused care upon the firmness of rock, this blanket of a newborn earth now we will have a place to call our home, beneath the silent gaze of the eternal mountains the sea retreated with the tides today if only in anticipation of the moment when God would mingle…
read morethe second day there was a day when the world was born that the sky fell down and its canopy stretched beyond the futilely grasping hands of sight the light danced for joy upon the limitless oceans of heaven to reach into the newborn womb of life chaos’ reign was overthrown as the waters that…
read moreToday I finished up the Winter 2011 flyer for Young Adults at Church of the Resurrection. It has been rather cold here in the Kansas City area for the last week and a half, and the other night I happened upon this great image of some ladies dancing on the beach. It occurred to me…
read moreI have been reading through Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, and couldn’t help but share a rather poignant passage that closed out one of the chapters I read today. It is a very moving death-bed scene in which Mr. Allen Woodcourt attempts to give hope and comfort to a dying beggar. First, a little background. Both…
read moreBack when I was first out of college I would spend many of the cold Michigan winter nights writing songs and trying my hand at poetry. During one particularly snow-packed couple of days I had the opportunity to meditate on the creation story in Genesis 1, and decided to put it to verse. Now, I…
read moreI finished up a couple of new videos this past week and thought I would share. The first is a promo for rezlife’s Souper Bowl Food Drive. I wanted to do something fun that also communicated what the event was about. Since the re-appropriation of ‘Super Bowl’ is often frowned upon by its trademark owners,…
read moreFor as long as human beings have been taking pictures, they have been taking pictures of cats. And as long as humans have been taking pictures of cats, they have been captioning those pictures. While lolcats may seem like a recent internet phenomenon, it has clearly been going on for much longer. Thus, lolcats are…
read morerezlife began a new month-long series last night, entitled ‘Attitude Adjustment.’ This series will take a more in-depth look at the Beatitudes as found in Matthew 5. Even though ‘Beatitude’ in meaning has nothing to do with ‘attitude,’ (as beatitudines is Latin for ‘blessed’) the parallelism of the beatitudes themselves (blessed is this person/ because…
read moreThis morning I was reading Psalm 85 in a version derived from the Septuagint text, and was struck by an interesting repetition of theme that was actually captured in the English rendition. *For the End; a psalm for the sons of Korah. O Lord, You were pleased with Your land; You turned back the captivity…
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