my burg

As my wife and I approach our fiftieth wedding anniversary, I'd like to share a few of my favorite quotes regarding marriage...  ON THE COVENANT A good motto for the bride and groom: "We are a work in progress with a lifetime contract." (Phyllis Koss) "It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) "Marriage isn't supposed to make you happy -- it's supposed to make you married. "  (Frank Pittman) "I didn't marry you because you were perfect. I didn't even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage. And when our children were growing up, it wasn't a house that protected them; and it wasn't our love that protected them -- it was that promise."   (Thorn...

Here are a few excerpts from Cornelius Van Til's tract,  Why I Believe in God . He is debating with a skeptic the use of reason, experience, and science in defending the Christian faith:  ---------   "...by my belief in God I do have unity in my experience. Not of course the sort of unity that you want. Not a unity that is the result of my own autonomous determination of what is possible. But a unity that is higher than mine and prior to mine. On the basis of God's counsel I can look for facts and find them without destroying them in advance. "I see both order and disorder in every dimension of life. But I look at both of them in the light of the Great Orderer Who is back of them. I need not deny either of them in the interest of optimism or in the interest of pessimism. "And yet I find all these, though standing on their heads, reporting much that is true. I need only to turn their reports right side up, making God instead of man the center of it all, and I have...

"Horses make you happy." This is what my wife said to me when she looked at this photo of me with Noble Spirit [above], a local celebrity who was the inspiration for Joanne Anderson's book, A Noble Spirit (Perry Creek Publishing, 2012).  "Horses make you happy."  Indeed, they do.  I was raised in a horse family. My mother was a rider, an international show jumper, hunt master, trainer, breeder, and trader. By seven years of age, I had my own horse, was riding, and won my first ribbon in western class (photo below) in Colorado.  When I was nine, we moved to Virginia, and I began riding English and learned how to jump. Also, my summers especially were filled with grooming, braiding, mucking stalls, and cleaning tack as my mother's horse business grew. After a succession of three horses, I tapered off riding, until many years later I rode again with her on competitive trail rides with her beloved Appaloosas [photo].  As a teenager I didn't ride as much, bu...

"Sailing to Byzantium"   by William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)   That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees — Those dying generations — at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. O sages standing in God’s holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,           And be the singing-masters of my soul.                            ...

“Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks." (Luke 12:35-36 ESV) I have recently been impressed with how many biblical references there are which call us as believers to action, or alertness, or watchfulness, or readiness to do good. Here are just a few (underlining added by me) ... "Be ready ..." (Matthew 24:44) "Be dressed for action and keep your lamps burning ..." (Luke 12:35) "We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work." (John 9:4) " Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong ." (1 Corinthians 16:13) "We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ..." (2 Corinthians 10:5) "Put on the whole armor of G...

I was encouraged by reading this compilation of quotations from C. S. Lewis on the topic of writing and writers. This collection of statements are excerpts from a variety of his previously published works, whether from his books or correspondence.  Here are a few of my highlights...  "Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again." "For every thought can be expressed in a number of different ways: and style is the art of expressing a given thought in the most beautiful words and rhythms of words." "In life and art both, as it seems to me, we are always trying to catch in our net of successive moments something that is not successive." "Isn’t it funny the way some combinations of words can give you—almost apart from their meaning—a thrill like music?" "The only difference is that poetry makes use of that sort of feeling ...