OK all you loyal fans out there (I beleive that would just be me right now). I am going to commit to post something here at least once a week. I need to exercise my writing muscles at least a little bit.

Current readings. It'e BIG BOOK time for me now. The lightest at the moment is a theology book by Stanley Hauerwas entitled Christian Existence Today. I'm pretty proud of myself for finding this one for $2 on the sale table of a local Christian bookstore. The book is a set of essays, most or all of whih were previously published in journals and such. They fall under three categories: "The Practice of the Church's Story"- dealing with the nature of the church, "The Ministry of the Church"-deals somewhat with pastoral roles, and "Serving in the World"-which contains a priceless essay title, "How Christian Universities Contribute to the Corruption of Youth".

I have been greatly enjoying these essays, though the work is somewhat less substantial than his earlier book A Community of Character.

I'm also reading Carol Quigley's Tragedy and Hope now. This is a 1300 page history of the world from 1914-1965. It is a fine example both of "macro history", that is theories about the waxing and waning of whole civilizations, as well as "conspiracy history", which is to say he takes a look at small groups of powerful people and thier effects on the course of large events. Because of this latter element this book is something of a bible to conspiracy nuts as you can see if you peek at the amazon reviews. All that aside, Mr Quigley was a very learned man and I'm enjoying his insights. It does read fairly quickly for the 300 pages I've read so far.

As for fiction, at the moment I'm working on Crime and Punishment. I'll reserve comment on that til I've finished it.

In other news, I spent most of the afternoon on Sunday hanging out with the founder and director of the Durham Rescue Mission , Ernie Mills. What a wondeful man! Perhaps as much as anything else, I was impressed by the fact that the mission from the beginning has consistently refused to accept government money so that there would be nothing to interfere with the ministry of the gospel. I'm planning to visit and tour their facility in the next couple of weeks, so be on the lookout for my report on that.