Global Rage

"... The currency of the term tolerance has recently become badly debased. When it used to mean the respecting of real, hard differences, it has come to mean instead a dogmatic abdication of truth-claims and a moralistic adherence to moral relativism - departure from either of which is stigmatized as intolerance."  -- Meic Pearse, Why The Rest Hates The West

"Openness - and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings - is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all."  -- Allen Bloom, The Closing of an American Mind

Kiss my backside

"It’s the supreme art of the devil that he can make the law out of the gospel. If I can hold on to the distinction between law and gospel, I can say to him any and every time that he should kiss my backside."

-- Martin Luther

I hope you never read this

I don't even know where to begin - I've known this creature for 5 years and I've talked to him more in the past three weeks than I have those other years combined. He's crass and hairy and slightly unattractive and in a word - leprechaun. He thinks I'm mean and calls me out when I publicly castrate him. His words, not mine. He spits (and sweats) when he gets excited. His taste in women is... paltry. I take him shopping and he forces me to come into the dressing room with him so that no one else can hear my critiques. My choice in pants concerns him because they're tighter than he's used to and "what if I get a boner and everyone sees?" His words, not mine.

He sings Alanis in the car and nothing else. He calls me Hilary Clinton because he says I like to think I can destroy men. He goes to the library and checks out The Spiderwick Chronicles and Ravi Zacharias in the same day. When he gets mad at me he threatens to smear his bare feet all over my pillow.

But he listens to me whine. He buys me food when we hang out and makes me laugh so hard I double over and can't talk for 2 minutes. He tells me he sleeps instead of praying and I nod because so do I. He isn't embarrassed that he cries when he thinks about his future and when I tell him secrets I know he'll keep them. His execution is terrible but his heart is big. So is his head.

He's been a large part of my delicately-held-together sanity the past month. If he knew I was so appreciative of our relationship he would freak out and think I was in love with him and cut me off for life, which is another reason why he's an idiot but the greatest. Happy birthday, my hobbit friend. I hope you never read this.

"There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk around the whole world till we come back to the same place..."

Why is this so difficult?