bierkergaard

Within the last month, the stat sites for Bierkergaard reveal that the country with the second most hits is Poland! Followed by India. Now, that is pretty cool. So, I want to do a shout out. In my new book coming out ( On the Edge: Helping Students Transition Imaginatively to College ), I tell a story about a Polish guy named Bart, who was a cook at the Whistle Stop Cafe in Montana, which illuminates the courage of Poles in light of Nazi and Communist oppression. Bart filled me in on the sad history of WWII when the West let Germany devour Poland and then stepped aside when the Bolsheviks from the East did the same. Bart gave me two stickers that day...one says " Pomorskie dobry kurs " which means something along the lines of "Good Course" and " Pomorskie w Unii . " You want to know where Communism was first called out? Poland...the Gdansk Shipyard. The Poles stared down dictatorship. The Poles are heroes and have a lot to teach us about courage in the

The God of heaven & earth is a God who loves beauty. -R.C. Sproul I have been searching for a one word description about all that God has made. Beautiful seems to be the apex term. God Himself, infinitely perfect, is beautiful. When we think of beauty, humanity defaults to physical traits and characteristics. Yet, beauty is much more fully-orbed than that. Mother Theresa was beautiful, and it was hardly because she was a Hottie. I wanted to see what was the number one site for the word "Beauty" on the web was and it wound up being a site dedicated to personal care items like anti-wrinkle cream, lip gloss, and other goods (www.beauty.com). The site itself is a commodification of attaining physical "beauty" through products and processes and is profoundly non-beautiful. In a cursory review, it looks like ethical and moral beauty is running about 5% of the sites if that...at least among the most "relevant" sites (considering Google's methodology ).

My last three blog postings haven't been about theology overtly. Too often Theology seems confined to the shelves of books. But it is about life itself. My love for R.E.M., Kierkergaard, and Stromboli. My ambivalent feeling about N.P.R.. My strong animosity towards government largess and Planned Parenthood. Theology is very much about what we love and don't. First, God. Second, Truth. So here is some theological reflection on the topics covered recently: 1) R.E.M. - I appreciate artful music that is saying something, even if it is hard to unravel its meaning. I don't have to agree with art 100% to appreciate it. Music is the heart-beat of a culture. Music is the one art form that is central in Heaven. So, it has eternal implications. 2) Kierkergaard - He railed against "Shop-Keeping" souls who joined the Church for safety and security. The complacent souls who wanted to keep Christ docile and domesticated. I think dullness is sinful, so I don't agree with h

So, it is my brother Steve's 44th birthday today. Thus, I sent him an email this morning wishing him a "Happy Birthday" and I queried as to whether he was going to have a birthday Stromboli with candles rather than cake. For you see, Steve is the Charlie Sheen of Stromboli-eating. My Pop had packed twenty flat football-sized Strombolis in an iced cooler from Berwyn Pizza--our hometown--to take out to Pittsburgh (via a layover in Lancaster for a night) during Thanksgiving. My brother emailed back that he had eaten all of the Strombolis by January, averaging roughly a half per day. What can I say, I am impressed by the ravenous consumption. Steve swears that no joint in Pittsburgh makes a decent Stromboli. Apparently, he gave one of his stash to a co-worker who still has it...hoping to extract a Free Agent price for the last remaining of the litter. I followed up my email to Steve with a phone call to him about 30 minutes ago, where we talked about his Stromboli Love. Af

Wow, N.P.R. just posted on Facebook the new release from R.E.M. Collapse Into Now. Wow, wow, wow. Wow. I first saw R.E.M. live back at Franklin Field in Philly back in the early 1980's at one of those concerts that had a series of bands playing. R.E.M. had just released Murmur if my memory serves me correctly. These days my memory serves me haphazardly like a daffy waitress that brings me liver and onions when I ordered a B.L.T. R.E.M. is one of my favorite bands of all time. Melodic hooks, jangly guitars, obscure and illuminating lyrics. Really, an American original in an era of knock-offs. For some reason, for example, Orange Crush moves me...but why in the hell why? What is it about? I have no clue. Man in the Moon is about the comedian Andy Kaufman...a really odd dude who got body slammed by a professional wrestler on David Letterman. When this brawl went down, I didn't know if it was absurd and intentional comedy or a real fight. One was never sure with professional

Just got finished with a lovely walk in the later evening. The air was wet with past rain, the sky clearing, and the stars making making themselves known. When I came home today, I was very tired. It wasn't that the day was unusually busy or stressful, it actually was very calm. Sometimes I just feel out of sorts and today was one of those days. So, I napped from 5-9. Napping is like a narcotic for me. Now I am rather spry. This explains my late night posting. The namesake for this blog Bierkergaard is obviously the Danish philosopher and thinker Soren Kierkergaard. He used to walk the streets of Copenhagen to both relieve anxiety and encounter life, the world, and humanity, in all of its beauty and brokenness. It was a dual dialectic, both calming and disturbing. I came across this video where a Lutheran pastor talks about this dialectic. It is a thoughtful reflection on writings and walkings of Kierkergaard. There is even a musical composition titled Kierkergaard Walking . I