By Wayne Allensworth It’s difficult to imagine now, but when the Apollo 11 lunar module set down in the Sea of Tranquility all those years ago, Americans were fixed on their TV screens, awed, fascinated, and, in some cases, disoriented by the momentous conclusion of the space race. I recall gathering with neighbors around a TV and watching the somewhat grainy broadcast with the sense of adventure...
By Wayne Allensworth Jacob’s Ladder (William Blake) All good things — and the bad ones, too — come to an end. Everything does. But it can’t be any other way. I was thinking along those lines while my wife and I were “taking down” (as opposed to “putting up”) Christmas, that is, the decorations, this year. We like to have a festive house for that wonderful, evocative, and often, poignant...
By Wayne Allensworth The electoral triumph of the Trump-Vance ticket was heartening to many of us. Though your observer remains wary of some of Trump’s cabinet nominees, the president-elect has shown signs of having learned some hard lessons from his last tussle with the Swamp. It’s been amusing — and gratifying — to watch the globo-leftists melt down, but we should not lapse into triumphalism or...
By Wayne Allensworth A meme on social media is about a new political ad from the Democrats. In the ad, a guy is scrolling through pornography on his cell phone, only to be interrupted when the door bursts open and an ominous figure — The Man — comes in to end the fun. CENSORSHIP! The kind that matters to the sex-obsessed left. “They” — those mean, censorious Republicans — want to restrict your...
By Wayne Allensworth Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. — John 8:12 Written in the fourth century BC, Plato’s Republic includes the oldest recorded account of what Dr. Sam Parnia, author of Lucid Dying, calls “recalled experiences of death” (RED). In that account, a Greek...
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world. — Max Weber: Essays in Sociology By Wayne Allensworth I craned my neck to see the magnificent ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I felt the exhilarating sensation of a tingle running through my scalp as I gazed at the Creation, the Fall, the Expulsion from the...
By Wayne Allensworth That time is past,And all its aching joys are now no more — William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey Sometime in the 1990s I admitted to myself that a return to our golden age, however one might imagine it, could never happen. Not a golden age, not even a silver one. A baser metal would have to serve. In researching my book, The Russian Question: Nationalism...
By Wayne Allensworth To this end I was born, and for this cause came I into the world,that I should bear witness unto the truth — John 18:37 I had come to see Mr. K knowing that his birthday was in June, so I asked him what the exact date was. He couldn’t remember. He took a notebook from the old-fashioned TV tray that sits by his recliner and thumbed through the pages. A thin smile passed...
By Wayne Allensworth And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven... Revelation 8:1 In Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard wrote that faith begins precisely where thought stops. What then is faith? In answering that question, YouTube’s “Boy In The Badlands” channel renders a very perceptive interpretation of Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film The Seventh Seal...
By Wayne Allensworth For all my friends, whatever their beliefs, that we may all open our eyes and see. Recorded in the Gospel According to St. John, Chapter 8, is one of the most intriguing stories in the Bible. Jesus was teaching at the temple when the scribes and Pharisees brought an adulterous woman to him for judgment. In one of many instances when the religious authorities attempted to trap...
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