pro-abortion, anti-communion: when religion becomes a weapon

religion can be used as a lot of things. it can be used as a way to bring seemingly disparate people together. it can be used as a mode of transcendent conversation. it can be used as a way to connect thousands of years of generations of people and to bring hope to people who might otherwise feel hopeless. certainly, it can be used for many, many great and noble things.

but it can also be used in very dangerous and divisive ways.

sadly, those who choose to use religion as a weapon of politics has become more and more frequent and severe.

do you f*#@ing love bacon!!??: a religious flowchart

over on the blog of john hardin, john posted a great religious flowchart from holy taco. so, which religion should you follow??

hbo's big love returns in january 2010

it's no secret that i'm a huge fan of hbo's big love. bar none, big love is my favorite tv show of all-time. it has drama, humor, mystery, intrigue, death, religion, plot twists…everything you could possibly want from a tv show.

in typical hbo fashion, the gaps between seasons of big love are long and maddening. so, it's with great excitement that i post the teaser trailer for the upcoming season—season 4—of big love that will begin in january 2010. the rumor mill has been saying that this season will see the dismantling of the family in some form or fashion and this trailer seems to hint at that (with a brilliant reference, as well, to michelangelo's the hand of god in the sistine chapel).

enjoy (despite its fuzziness).

our sweet little olive turns 1

one year. wow.

it's nearly impossible to avoid all the necessary clichés with this type of post. it feels like yesterday... time flies... she'll be a teenager before you know it. blah blah blah. the reality, though, is that all the clichés are true, really.

it does seem like just yesterday that we were taking off for the hospital at 1:30 in the morning and seeing olive for the first time just a little after 5 a.m. (you can read the overview of those events here). time does fly when you have a sweet little girl that turns 1 without you realizing that even a day or a week has passed. and yes, the reality that she'll be all grown up very soon sets in when you begin making plans for that first birthday party.

twitter me this: 5 twitter gripes

i love twitter.

for a lot of different reasons. it's fast, it's streamlined, it's connective, it's educational, it allows regular exercise in brevity, it's ADD-friendly, it's bridge-building, it's uniquely expressive. :) it's all this and more.

but.

i do have a handful of gripes. there's several things that consistently bug me on twitter. one of the beauties of twitter is that it's not too strictly-defined, so you can use it for whatever purposes you might have. so my list of gripes is highly personal. it isn't like these things are violations of some kind of twitter equivalent to the code of hammurabi or the 10 commandments. and while i do think my list is probably shared by a large number of twitterers, it's still necessary to say that it's just sorta "one of those things" kind of deals for me and maybe not for anyone else.

pulaski academy, marching bands & the new racism

when i saw, on the arkansas blog, the teaser, "A local blogger has written—unhappily—that Pulaski Academy won't send its band to a football playoff game in Helena-West Helena", i thought this was going to be a flashback to 1993 when the conway high school football team lost to pine bluff in the state championship game. after a searing defeat, some conway fans looked for a direction in which their finger could point. of all places, they found the band, saying that their minimal playing caused the team to lose. yes, you read that correctly: the band's lack of horns and drums and cymbals. so when i saw this headline, i thought i was in for the same disbelief from nearly 16 years ago.

that, though, is not what i discovered.

anne pressly & curtis vance: the uncomfortable unspoken reality

for this post, i'm working under the assumption that most of you know the story of the rape and murder of little rock news anchor anne pressly. it's a heartbreaking and deeply saddening story that received a little closure today with the announcement that vance was found guilty of all charges.

as a father to two daughters, i can't begin to imagine what it would be like to be anne pressly's parents and family. the deep, deep pain would be unbearable and it would be difficult to maintain any semblance of a normal life. it's honestly hard for me to think about it as i write this.

on the other hand, though, as i watch all the coverage of the trial, i keep coming back to one particular thing: i have a deep sense of sorrow that goes out to curtis vance and his family.