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Creatures Under Heaven (updated)
“To deal the tortures of hell to the animal creation is a way which too many people have of showing their belief in it….” from A Dog of Flanders by Ouida, 1872 This afternoon we did some needful grocery shopping, and on the way home Mrs. Orr asked me to swing into the drive-thru of our favorite local burger joint. She wanted to pick up a gallon of their tea, the best in the region. Idling behind a couple of other cars in the lane, I looked across at the back yard of a home a couple hundred yards away from the burger place. In the yard is a small…
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Law-Word
Back in my Argumentative Protestant Days, I became fascinated with a sect of the Presbyterian/Reformed world who were known as theonomists (from the Latin for “God’s law”) or Christian Reconstructionists. Briefly, these fellows advanced the idea that society could be reconstructed using the principles found in biblical law. The most prominent of these men was a very interesting character named Rousas Rushdoony, who liked to use a very handy phrase, “law-word.” He was quite influential in the 1990s, but after his death, the organization which was his life’s work seemed to fall apart, as movements headed by an irreplaceable leader tend to do. I attended a conference where Rushdoony was…
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Winter Rampant
Ah, it’s a winter day and the breathing of the year is slowing down, agonal, soon to stop. The endless circling of the stars and the thin shafts of sunlight spear down into the earth and bring a certain gladness, it seems to me, to the birds who go about their business above me. The frost retreats from the heat of my thumb, pressed against the grainy glass of the windshield in passing, a reminder that I still have within me the heat of the life-force, the soul-ember that can melt the deep cold that exists between the planets, that exists between men of the same bloodline who should be…
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Patience And Mercy
Nature teaches beasts to know their friends. – William Shakespeare Coriolanus, Act II, Scene 1 It was nearing the noon hour when one of my coworkers — we’ll call her Alice — asked me if I wanted to see her dogs. “Bub’s outside with them. He came to pick me up and brought them along.,” she said. I’ve seen photos and heard many lively tales of Alice’s dogs but have never met them in the flesh, so I quickly said, “Sure!” and followed her out the back entrance to the parking lot. Walking behind her, I was thinking of her boyfriend, Bub. Alice is several years younger than me and…