dual personalities

There is always a lot to do after traveling in regards to catching up on laundry, putting things back where they belong, re-stocking the refrigerator, and generally re-establishing order. I also had a lot of reading to catch up with since I was (intentionally) without a computer for four days. Zut alors!

This is a great rant from Blair Sobel on “fashion”: “However, if you want to see real poor taste schlubbery go to any airport. Remember when it meant something to dress up to go travel? Last week a woman appeared naked from the waist down exposing more than her ass cheeks while waiting in a ticket line at Spirit Airlines in Florida. Is it time to get real Fashion Police in to do some clean up now!?! Forget decorum. Basic decency is at risk here. But this is how far things have sunk in our collective. And it is kinda serious. I refuse to travel because the airport experience alone permanently repulses me — no matter how great the place I plan to go is.” She is not wrong about the airport!

Carl Trueman explains that “There is a lesson here for us all in this current political climate: The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, and, as soon as I start thinking he is, I might find myself on the way to excusing or even justifying evil.”

As usual, I agree with Anne about Halloween. “What this means is that there are no holidays in America. By the time you get to the special day, you are sick of it and just want it to go away. Through no fault of anyone except Satan, all the actual feasting has been transformed into a strange fast, an always Halloween but never All Saints Day, always Christmas and never Advent—or something like that.”

And I love sermons like this from John Piper:

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
     Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

Also, when I left for Maryland I was in the middle of moving all my houseplants inside from the Florida Room and trying to find them winter homes in the limited confines of my house. Some of my plants have grown so much over the toasty summer!

This is quite a job, but I am making progress.

Enjoy your Tuesday!