Everything is a Sign
“The reason Lewis and Chesterton and Williams and Tolkien fascinate readers so much is that fundamentally they still live in the medieval world, a world chock full of built-in, God-designed significance. That’s why they all think analogically, sacramentally, and imagistically. For them, everything means something beyond itself. Everything is not only a thing, but a sign, full of significance.” ~ Peter Kreeft, in Permanent Things

Happy T!
From years ago: The Homestar Runner crew wishes everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. Disclaimer: If you don’t already know about the characters of Homestar Runner, this will not be funny to you.

FDR Changes Thanksgiving
Bill Kauffman, a Batavia local and my favorite writer at Front Porch Republic, gives us some interesting Thanksgiving history. Read the entire article. It’s very funny. Here’s a teaser: It seems that in 1939 Thanksgiving was to fall on November 30th, a matter of consternation to the big merchants of the National Retail Dry Goods Association (NRDGA). The presidents of Gimbel Brothers, Lord & Taylor, and other unsentimental vendors petitioned President Roosevelt to move Thanksgiving to the previous Thursday, November 23, thus creating an additional week of Christmas shopping—and to the astonishment of those Americans without dollar signs in thei

Logos and Identity
Once a unifying Logos or belief in a reason outside ourselves is abandoned, all we have left are feelings and desires. If we cannot let the world or our place and meaning in the world be defined by the Logos, then we will define it entirely within the context of our own desire. And this is where we get the modern and postmodern foundations for reality – not in a reality that exists without us, but in a reality that is defined by what I feel and desire. So we no longer speak of ourselves and human beings with sexual desires to be brought into accordance with who we really, objectively are. We are not human beings with sexual desires; instead, we a

Fashion and Permanent Things
It always amuses me when I hear people picking on the fashion of the 80s, or even the fashion of last year. On what basis? What standard tells you that high hair and leg warmers are absurd? What standard tells you that those poncho thingies are out and some other fashion in? And yet I hear people speak with more certainty about what is fashionable and what is not – and heap more ridicule on this very basis – than I hear people talk about the certainty of realities like the soul. The Ersatz Elevator, one of the books in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, has the character Esme, who adopts the orphaned B