A psalmist for our day Bruce Cockburn is a superb guitarist, a fact evident on his albums and especially in his live performances, and…
Denis Haack
![Denis](https://ransomfellowship.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/denis-150x150.jpg)
The Book Thief (Markus Zusak, 2005)
In 2005 Markus Zusak published The Book Thief, a novel about a young orphan in Nazi Germany living in a small town near Dachau.…
Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m only bleeding)” (1964)
A Very Small Faithfulness This week I’ve been writing a lecture on Bob Dylan, and so have been listening to a lot of his…
Empire of the Summer Moon (S.C. Gwynne, 2010), The Killing of Crazy Horse (Thomas Powers, 2010)
A deadly clash, an unfinished story By the middle years of the 19th century white European immigrants had spread across the eastern half of…
Can We, Will We Redeem the Vampire?
Dracula (1897) In 1897 Bram Stoker published a book that drew upon numerous ancient myths from a variety of people groups that spoke of…
Wings Not Walls
Bulwarks of safety Walls have been in the news. At various places along America’s southern border the U.S. government is erecting a border fence…
The Insulted and Injured (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1861)
A world of wicked self-interest Good stories—really good stories—touch on the deepest questions and yearnings of the human condition. The story may be set…
Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011)
Nostalgia traps the soul We had a friend who one time mentioned she thought she had been born in the wrong century. “When you…
Discernment Exercise: The School of Life
A secularist pursuit of compassion I first became aware of Alain de Botton by reading his The Architecture of Happiness, a book of uncommon…
Resolutions Not Made
I have never been one for New Year’s resolutions, mainly because I have never been able to keep any I’ve made much beyond the…