We may curse our bad luck that it’s sounds like its; who’s sounds like whose; they’re sounds like their (and there); there’s sounds like theirs; and you’re sounds like your. But if we are grown-ups who have been through full-time education, we have no excuse for muddling them up.
[an excerpt from Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves]
I don’t have a strong opinion either way about Halloween, but about 15 years ago James B. Jordan wrote an interesting article (entitled “Concerning Halloween”) on the holiday and its meaning for the Church. The article can be found here.
(Credit for the find goes to Kurt Hannah and Internet Monk.)
There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few [cents], walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, “Business as usual.” But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.
These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defence, not God’s, that the self-righteous should rush.
[an excerpt from Yann Martel's Life of Pi, Chapter 25]
