Ta Da!!

Nathan's book has been published!!  It is called Karl Barth and the Resurrection of the Flesh: The Loss of the Body in Participatory Eschatology.  We just got our copies a couple of days ago, and I'll post a link as soon as it's available online.

Unbroken

Last night I finished the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.  It's an amazing story and a great book.  It tells the life story of Louie Zamperini: olympic athlete, WWII bombardier, and Pacific POW.  The story is harrowing, exciting, suspenseful and brutal.  But the thing that makes the story so wonderful is that the end is totally surprising and absolutely delightful.  It's hard for me to express how full of charms the ending is without telling you about it.  So go get the book and read the whole thing.  Don't stop until you've finished the last page.

Brother and Sister

Just a few fun pictures of Z and Eden.

Amah brought them shirts from California:

Trying to get a good picture of them both.  The last one is my favorite:

Last night Z woke up with a bad dream and then fell asleep again in my bed.  Only a little later, Eden woke up crying and got into bed, too:

Owl Art

Z made this at school.  Wow -- I think it's great!

Has My Son Been Watching "Project Runway" When I'm Not Around?

Last Sunday Z came into my room just as I was done dressing.  I turned from the mirror towards him and asked, "How do I look?"

"Not good," was the simple response.

"Why not?  What's wrong?"  I inquired.

"Needs more texture," he advised.

The crazy thing?  I think he was right.

That Sounds Familiar . . .

I'm working on a new class for spring semester in which we'll spend some time looking at the question of slavery from an historical, biblical, and theological point of view.  I was reviewing my dissertation for reading material and came across this quote from an unnamed antebellum Southern minister interviewed by Philo Tower, quoted in his book Slavery Unmasked: : Being a Truthful Narrative of a Three Years’ Residence and Journeying in Eleven Southern States: To Which is Added the Invasion of Kansas, Including the Last Chapter of Her Wrongs, published in 1856.  This minister said, 

Is it wise . . . on any occasion, to act as though the population of the south were homogeneous?  If our institutions . . . require that a portion of the people of the state should be treated in every place and at all times as a subordinated caste, by what authority, human or divine, does the citizen violate that obligation.  Need I say the experience of the world attests, that the battle of the cross can be no where successfully waged, unless the laws of the land and the established usages of society are faithfully cherished and supported. (pg. 397)

Amazing how much this sounds like Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon only last week:

Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

The Punch

Over Christmas Abe was messing around with Mom, pretending to punch her with the boxing gloves.  Mom was happily going along with it.  Someone told Nathan to take a picture, and this was the result:

And then this: