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Ryan, my 15 month old son, was trying to eat his favourite addiction (Cheerios) on the front step the other day. His left hand held a spare set of keys that he’s decided to take everywhere. His right hand was clutching a bright blue ‘nail’ from his Little Tike’s Work Bench. He was squatting down [...]

Grace And Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love © 2005
Continuum Books
172 pages

I can’t remember who recommended this book to me, but I’m sure glad he or she did! It sat on my Amazon wish list for a while until I threw it into the cart on impulse.
There’s four chapters in this book, which are expanded [...]

Grace And Necessity: Reflections on Art And Love is an expansion of a series of lectures Rowan Williams gave in 2005. In the first chapter, Williams expounds the aesthetic philosophy of Jacques Maritain. Consider these quotes:
Art as propaganda, its workings determined by the purpose of of persuading those who see and hear of a message [...]

We hear the accusation, “hypocrite!” thrown around often today. Since this is an election year in the United States, all the political news pundits have the term at the ready. We all know that nothing takes the wind out of a successful campaign like a good exposure of hypocrisy.
Oddly enough, the word hypocrisy didn’t always [...]

Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church © 2008
HarperCollins
332 pages

It’s no secret. I read pretty much everything that Bishop Wright writes. I was particularly excited by the subtitle of this book. This is an area I feel we all could use some clarity in.
Here’s the short version of the [...]

Whenever I want a smooth read with a good dose of biting satire, I turn to Vonnegut. In Hocus Pocus, the lead character reflects on how many people he killed in Vietnam.
I have long had a sort of ballpark figure in my head. . . . I hadn’t been working as a teacher at Athena [...]

Have you ever heard Death Cab For Cutie’s “Marching Bands of Manhattan”? It’s a fantastic song that breaks typical songwriting convention. Most pop songs start with a verse, then build to a chorus. The musicians pull back for a second verse, only to build back up for another chorus before going all out on a [...]

Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana © 2008
Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf
242 pages

I bought the first book in this series, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt for its novelty.  The Vampire chronicler herself was tackling the life of Christ, and it seemed like an honest endeavour. I bought the sequel as soon as it came [...]

I decided to read through Calvin’s Institutes a couple years ago.  I’m 300 pages into it now, and loving every minute. It’s the sort of book you want to sip at rather than gulp down, or you’ll miss all the nuances of his arguments.
What most people know about Calvin is his emphasis on the Creator’s [...]

Let’s start with a couple definitions from my favourite online dictionary: Ninjawords (it’s fast like a ninja):

Happiness: joy, the emotion of being happy; good luck; good fortune; prosperity
Joy: the feeling of happiness, extreme cheerfulness; an activity etc. which causes this feeling

Here’s what my big Canadian Oxford Dictionary has to say about it:

Happy: feeling or showing [...]