Comment magazine, one of my favorites, recently ran a poetry contest–more specifically, a rondeau competition. (Those from commonwealth nations will recognize a familiar rondeau in John McCrae’s, “In Flanders Fields.”) The contest invited entries focused on the theme of education for their 4th annual “Making the Most of College” issue. In my tentative poetic scribblings,…
Those in southern Ontario might be interested in my upcoming lecture at the University of Guelph, “Rethinking the Secular and the Religious: Explorations in Postmodern Philosophy and Fiction.” January 21, 2010, 7:00pmWar Memorial Hall, The University of Guelph Here’s a brief description from the website: To the surprise of many who expected the steady triumph…
Al Mohler’s post on Thanksgiving reminded me of something that struck me this past Thursday. “Giving thanks,” he rightly notes, is a theological act. Indeed, isn’t it interesting that at the heart of Christian worship is a meal which is itself indexed, even named, by this act: the eu-charist is a “thanksgiving,” and at the…
Once again, David Brooks nails it in today’s column, “The Other Education“–broaching a core argument I make in Desiring the Kingdom. Listen to how Brooks’ puts it: Like many of you, I went to elementary school, high school and college. I took such and such classes, earned such and such grades, and amassed such and…
Yesterday morning while riding the bus to work I was re-reading a section of Robert Brandom’s Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism in preparation for my seminar on Philosophy of Language & Interpretation. And I experienced one of those wonderful philosophical moments of transport, where I had this sense of being caught up in something…
The January Series is a 23-year tradition at Calvin College. During our January-term, the college offers free public lectures by notable public intellectuals, policy experts, journalists, and other leaders in their fields. Past January Speakers have included folks like Dr. Paul Farmer, Bill McKibben, Jean Kilbourne, George Weigel, N.T. Wright, Barbara Brown Taylor, Miroslav Volf,…