2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 75,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Chad Harbach 2012 – New Year’s Resolution

I have never made a New Year’s resolution.

Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens died on 16 December 2011.

I am not qualified to make any comment on the work or thought of Mr. Hitchens. I have never read anything he wrote. I have only seen random quotes attributed to him and second hand accounts of his writings.

Evil

Questioned about the origin of evil, Eckhart Tolle draws a useful analogy to speak about the nature of God and God’s relationship to creation.

Ting the Mouse

I know Christmas is over and that we have all moved on. But here is one last Christmas story as much for the introduction as for the story itself.

Letter To A Christmas Visitor

Dear Christmas Visitor,

I do not know your name. We have only met once. You greeted me warmly at the back of church on Christmas Eve, shook my hand , smiled, and wished me a “Merry Christmas”.

The Christmas Angel

I have posted on the Times Colonist “Spiritually Speaking” blog, the children’s Christmas story I will read at our 10:00 service tomorrow morning.

see: http://blogs.timescolonist.com/2011/12/23/the-christmas-angel/ 

The Christmas Star

It is easy in the midst of the demands of this season to lose touch with the true meaning of Christmas.

Choice

Yesterday’s “Wrath of God” post generated an important response from Tress who says,

I am still wrestling with this matter of choice.

She goes on to explain,

My problem is with the millions of our fellow human beings who may have never experienced the joys of unselfishness, beauty and love in its fullest sense.

In what sense is it fair to say that people who have never known beauty and love and have been raised around selfishness, violence, and abuse, still have real choice about the lives they live?

Abigail’s Daddy Finds His Joy

Another children’s Christmas story.