Two Conversations at Once

Two Conversations at Once

I did not listen to much classical music while I was growing up. I can remember hearing Tchaikovsky’s Overture Solonnelle (the 1812 Overture) when I was in about eighth grade. I was fascinated by it. When at seventeen I was able to buy my own stereo, the first...
Two Conversations at Once

Devotion

[This essay was originally published on February 26, 2016.] Time is limited. Earthly life ends with a period or even an exclamation point, not with an ellipsis. We are granted threescore and ten years, or, if strong enough, fourscore. Anything beyond that is an excess...
Two Conversations at Once

A Christmas Canard

Certain professing believers are detractors of Christmas observance. They insist that real Christians must not celebrate Christmas in either their homes or their churches. The objections that they raise fall into two broad categories. The first category is grounded in...
Two Conversations at Once

In the Bleak Midwinter

In one of the courses that I used to teach, I spent part of the semester discussing how hymns work. Hymns are poems, and poems are works of art. One of the principal ways in which art communicates is through analogy. A work of art sets up an analogy by drawing a...