my burg

"Horses make you happy." This is what my wife said to me when she looked at this photo of me with Noble Spirit [above], a local celebrity who was the inspiration for Joanne Anderson's book, A Noble Spirit (Perry Creek Publishing, 2012).  "Horses make you happy."  Indeed, they do.  I was raised in a horse family. My mother was a rider, an international show jumper, hunt master, trainer, breeder, and trader. By seven years of age, I had my own horse, was riding, and won my first ribbon in western class (photo below) in Colorado.  When I was nine, we moved to Virginia, and I began riding English and learned how to jump. Also, my summers especially were filled with grooming, braiding, mucking stalls, and cleaning tack as my mother's horse business grew. After a succession of three horses, I tapered off riding, until many years later I rode again with her on competitive trail rides with her beloved Appaloosas [photo].  As a teenager I didn't ride as much, bu

"Sailing to Byzantium"   by William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)   That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees — Those dying generations — at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. O sages standing in God’s holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,           And be the singing-masters of my soul.                                 Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is;

“Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks." (Luke 12:35-36 ESV) I have recently been impressed with how many biblical references there are which call us as believers to action, or alertness, or watchfulness, or readiness to do good. Here are just a few (underlining added by me) ... "Be ready ..." (Matthew 24:44) "Be dressed for action and keep your lamps burning ..." (Luke 12:35) "We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work." (John 9:4) " Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong ." (1 Corinthians 16:13) "We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ..." (2 Corinthians 10:5) "Put on the whole armor of G

I was encouraged by reading this compilation of quotations from C. S. Lewis on the topic of writing and writers. This collection of statements are excerpts from a variety of his previously published works, whether from his books or correspondence.  Here are a few of my highlights...  "Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again." "For every thought can be expressed in a number of different ways: and style is the art of expressing a given thought in the most beautiful words and rhythms of words." "In life and art both, as it seems to me, we are always trying to catch in our net of successive moments something that is not successive." "Isn’t it funny the way some combinations of words can give you—almost apart from their meaning—a thrill like music?" "The only difference is that poetry makes use of that sort of feeling

"By destroying traditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents, by licensing the opinions of the most foolish, by substituting instruction for education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by fostering a notion of getting on, to which the alternative is a hopeless apathy, Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negation: the artificial, mechanized or brutalized control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos."  -- T. S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture (1948) 

Here are 25 of my favorite one-liners from comedian Steven Wright:   1)  I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize. 2)  Borrow money from pessimists -- they don't expect it back. 3)  Half the people you know are below average. 4)  82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot. 5)  A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory. 6)  All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand. 7)  The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. 8)  OK, so what's the speed of dark? 9)  How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink? 10)  If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something. 11)  Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm. 12)  When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane. 13)  Hard work pays off in the future; laziness pays off now. 14)  I intend to live forever ... So far, so good. 15)  If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? 16)  Eagles may soar, but weasels don'

O my Luve is like a red, red rose    That’s newly sprung in June; O my Luve is like the melody    That’s sweetly played in tune. So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,    So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear,    Till a’ the seas gang dry. Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,    And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; I will love thee still, my dear,    While the sands o’ life shall run. And fare thee weel, my only luve!    And fare thee weel awhile! And I will come again, my luve,    Though it were ten thousand mile. -- Robert Burns  Image credit: photo above by Milly Sime on Unsplash.

Regarding the authority of God and his revealed word, Carl Henry writes,   "Beyond all doubt, biblical religion is authoritarian in nature. The sovereign God, creator of the universe, Lord of history, dispenser of destiny, determines and rewards the true and the good.  God commands and has the right to be obeyed, and the power also to punish the disobedient and reward the faithful.  Behind God's will stands omnipotent power.  The notion that the individual subjectively determines what is ultimately good and evil, true and false, not only results in an encroaching nihilism, but also presupposes the illusion of a godless [i.e., God-less] world. God can be ignored only if we assume the autonomy of the world. But it is God who in his purpose has determined the existence and nature of the world.  "The divine sovereignty extends to every sphere of life-- the sphere of work, whether in the laboratory or in the forum; the sphere of love, whether in the home or in neighbor-relatio