Drum roll please… The results are in for the 2024: Best of the Best in all the respective media categories. Please see below and also the archives for previous years. Happy viewing and reading everyone, and as always, we would love to know what you think in the comment section below. Separate reviews are linked on the underlined titles. Enjoy!
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This memorial is long overdue as we fast approach the 4th year memorial this coming fall of the late Professor Thomas Howard. I recalled him recently as I read an article he wrote about sanctifying your home as a holy place. The article referenced a whole book he wrote on the subject of sanctifying our ordinary and humdrum habitations. As I reveled in his perky writing style, it struck me again how much he reminds me of one of my other great spiritual fathers, C.S. Lewis. Then I remembered how many times in my life I was blessed to enjoy the company of this would be American Oxford Don.
Continue readingDrum roll please… The results are in for the 2023: Best of the Best in all the respective media categories. Please see below and also the archives for previous years. Happy viewing and reading everyone, and as always, we would love to know what you think in the comment section below. Separate reviews are linked on the underlined titles. Enjoy!
Adult Movies/TV
Nefarious (2023)
Sound of Freedom (2023)
Big George Foreman (2023)
Shiny Happy People (2023)
Marshall (2017)
Lupin (2021)
The Burial (2023)
With fall and colder, bracing weather upon us, it is a terrific time to curl up next to a warm fire or radiator and soak in a good story. Spiritual memoir has to be my favorite genre, and there are two out this year that are knocking my socks off.
First, North Korea defector Yeonmi Park has returned with a follow up to her first autobiography In Order to Live; she now writes about her more recent struggle in While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector’s Search for Freedom in America. She writes about the cancel culture and critical race theory that threatens our current liberties. As a survivor of the one of the world’s most repressive regimes, her command of the English language and the eloquence with which she advocates for freedom is compelling. What kind of hell on earth she went through to be free makes one cherish what America has given to the world.
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Am reading a fantastic book for Lent by a woman who serves in ministry in the Anglican Church in their home parish in Pittsburgh, PA. She is another C.S. Lewis in her ability to take complex spiritual experiences and capture them with poignant and contemporary images. Her personal honesty and vulnerability make the work eminently readable and relatable. Tish Harrison Warren is author of Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep. It is half spiritual memoir (my favorite genre of writing at this time of my life) and half prayer manual. The structure is based on the Compline service in the Book of Common Prayer, a service the author has grown particularly drawn to and even dependent upon.
Continue readingClean Tuesday of First Week of Great Lent
“Cuz you can go to your college and you can go to your school. If you ain’t got Jesus you’re just an educated fool and that’s all.”
Denomination Blues by the 77’s
I love spiritual memoirs. Seems like I am always finishing one right before the start of Great Lent. This year is no exception as I polished off Eric Metaxas‘ very witty and inspiring story of his coming to Jesus called A Fish Out of Water. There is so much in this book I identify with. A son of two immigrants from the vastly different countries of Germany and Greece, Eric always had difficulty fitting in wherever he went. As an intellectual phenom, he was promoted a grade early on which added to his awkwardness since he was almost always the youngest in his age group. After he achieved his dream of graduating from Yale, he hunted about searching for life’s deeper purpose waiting to be “discovered” for the brilliant person he thought himself to be. In the end, a coworker from a dead end corporate job introduces him to Jesus and the idea that God is not just some remote being but a Person interested in having a relationship with him.
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Unicorn Diaries is a book about a unicorn named Rainbow Tinstletail, but unicorns call her Bo. She lives in Sparklegrove Forest and learns in Sparklegrove School. Her teacher’s name is Mr. Rumptwinkle. Each unicorn has a unicorn power; Bo’s power is that she can grant one wish every week.
Here are some fun facts about unicorns. First, they glow when they are scared or nervous. Second, when they snore, it sounds like music. Finally, rainbows fly out of their hooves when they dance.
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It never ceases to amaze us every Christmas season how many good picture books are out there. But there is one I wish to draw attention to as it gives due praise to our often overlooked first responder, the cop on the beat. Cop’s Night Before Christmas has delightful illustrations and continues the Santa Claus legend with a jolly St. Nick adapted to police officers, complete with, not a sleigh but a Christmas helicopter! Best of all, it was actually written by a police officer, Michael D. Harrison. So Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
Best Friends is a new book about a beautiful girl named Shannon who is also the author. Shannon lives in a small house with two sisters and a brother and two parents. Her older sister Wendy moved to Los Angeles to become a model.
Shannon has two best friends Jen and Adrienne. In Shannon’s school there was a girl named Jenny who is very mean to Shannon. Jen and Jenny were best friends first, but then Adrienne moved to another school and Shannon was left alone. Next year, Jen and Shannon became best friends. Shannon thought Jenny and her could be friends too, but Jenny was still mean to Shannon.
Continue readingWhen I was a boy, my heroes were Christian missionaries who journeyed to primitive tribes in remote places on the globe, learned the language and culture of the locals, created an alphabet for that tribe, then translated the Scriptures into that newly discovered language. I thought perhaps someday God might call me to such a work, so I studied classical languages as a basis for all untranslated tongues. Though I never became a missionary of this type, the work of translating and communicating the Gospel to an unreached people continues to interest me.
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