all of this year's XOXO talks were stellar, but this is the only one that comes with a newly-launched archive of nearly-lost artwork #

Liverpool tattoo artist Rachel Baldwin made charming tattoos for each line of the Talking Heads classic and made it into a music video #

Ada Ada Ada is documenting her transition on Instagram, uploading shirtless photos weekly to test their nudity guidelines #

I didn't even realize iOS automations could do this #

they're asking people not to access NYT games or cooking apps until it's over, so give up that Wordle streak #

inflation was a painful global phenomenon, and every ruling party was punished for it regardless of political leanings #

Everyone presumably acknowledges that there is nothing wrong with children dressing up as fairies, Disney characters, Marvel superheroes, and (my own favourite when I was a child) black cats in order to go door to door with their friends after dark to collect candy. The argument against Halloween is that it also glorifies violence, gore, and death, so that it is unsuitable for Christians to participate in Halloween. Collecting candy is fine; it is the frightening stuff that comes afterward that is the problem. Halloween trades in things like graveyards and corpses and ugly witches on broomsticks and bats and cobwebs and Frankenstein monsters. So, the question arises: why do people delight in such scary stuff?

The story of Cain and Abel is the story of the human race. It is tragically timeless, for it is tirelessly enacted over and over again in every generation. As Larry Norman once queried (as aged historians may remember from his song “Nothing Really Changes”), “Will Cain kill Abel—with a bayonet?” Regardless of the choice of weapon, somewhere and some place that murder is happening even now as you are reading this.

I have been reading liberal theology since my college days—i.e. theologies which deny many, most, or all of the major tenets of the traditional Christian Faith. The theologies are as many and as varied as their authors, but they all share a conviction that Jesus of Nazareth didn’t say and do all the things which the New Testament recorded that He said and did, that the Gospels are not to be trusted as history, and that therefore the basic dogmas of the historical Church are wrong. The late Bishop John Spong (inset) is a modern and sterling example.

G. K. Chesterton wrote that he once left fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery and hadn’t found any books so sensible since (from his Orthodoxy, “The Ethics of Elfland”). I suggest that Christianity is one such fairy tale, and also that it is a myth. But it is a fairy tale come true, and a myth that became a fact.

I am told that during a very interesting and well-run radio show about deaconesses, it was agreed (or at least widely thought) that Phoebe, mentioned famously in Romans 16:1, was a deaconess. But was she?

The work of the prophet Haggai is short and easy to miss; it is a mere two chapters in our Bibles sandwiched in between the books of Zephaniah and Zechariah. If you are flipping quickly through the final pages of the Old Testament he easy to miss. After ploughing through longer works such as those of Isaiah (66 chapters), Jeremiah (52 chapters, plus 5 more chapters of Lamentations), and Ezekiel (48 chapters), Haggai looks positively puny in comparison

Now that Great Lent is upon us, the question sometimes arises about where we should put our spiritual focus. There are two places we should certainly not put our focus—and only one place where we should.

It is a wonderful thing to know the Scriptures well, but there is a drawback: since we know how all the stories end, we can miss the drama inherent in the narrative. For example, In Luke 7:11f we can read about the grief of the widow of Nain, but since we know that her son’s death will end in his resurrection before he can be buried, we can skip too quickly from her sorrow to the happy ending and miss how terrible that grief must have been for her.

Many people will (hopefully) identify the above quote as coming from the speech of Polonius in Act 1, Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It was part of the fatherly talk he gave to his son Laertes before the boy moved away to university. It is now often quoted as a bit of perennial wisdom for life (it was written by Shakespeare, after all). It is not as often known that it was part of a speech that Shakespeare meant to be recognized as almost meaninglessly platitudinous, a kind of Elizabethan “blah-blah-blah, yada-yada-yada”.

It has been suggested to me that in many (most?) Evangelical circles one becomes a Christian “by accepting the finished work of Christ”—i.e. by believing and accepting as true that on the cross Jesus paid the full price due our sin and by saying a prayer acknowledging this.

Fr. Apostolos reminds us this Halloween season of the absolute and exclusive claims laid upon us by Jesus Christ.

Fr. Apostolos addresses Christ's triumph through the elevation of the Cross.

Fr. Apostolos shares about myrrh in the Old Testament, New Testament, and today. "We must become emblems of hope as we bear that sacred myrrh, that oil of healing to a broken world."

Fr. Apostolos reminds us that our whole self belongs to Christ.

Fr. Apostolos shares from the first epistle from Apostle Paul to the Corinthians. "Trying to overcome our passions, we often feel like our best is not going to be good enough. If that's the case, you should take heart, because you are not the first, nor will you be the last. You are not alone in that feeling."

Fr. Apostolos talks on stewardship and addressed the role that Christian stewardship plays in bridging the gap between the material and immaterial aspects of our faith. By consecrating the material resources of our lives to God we can escape the trap of reducing our faith in Jesus Christ to a disembodied philosophy.

Fr. Apostolos Hill shares a homily centered on the Epistle reading and St. Paul's admonition that we exercise the spiritual gifts given to us for the building up of the Body of Christ.

Fr. Apostolos Hill speaks on moving past the staid "good boy" mis-characterization of salvation and toward the inner transformation exhibited in the feast. St. Athanasius wrote about the "fire in the sword" to describe the process of becoming by divine grace what Jesus is by divine nature.

Fr. Apostolos Hill delivers a homily about the belief that leads to salvation as opposed to a nominal "belief" that does not.

Fr. Apostolos preaches about the challenge to be obedient to Orthodox hierarchs in the rebellious ethos of modern society.

Fr. Apostolos Hill preaches about All Saints' Day and what it means to be not of this world, or, Aghios. He reminds us of the distinction of being in this world but not of this world and the importance of striving to be Aghios each day.

Scott Hanselman and his wife will be joining the walk for diabetes on May 6 2006. They've set a goal of raising $10,000 for this event and could use your help in reaching that goal. I encourage all of you to go to Scott's blog to find out more about this worthy cause, or go directly to diabetes.org to make... (64 words)

Sermon on the Sunday of All Saints (Heb 11:33-12:2; Mt 10:32-33, 37-38; 19:27-30)

Sermon on the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Ephesians 2:14-22; Luke 13:10-17)

Sermon on the Sunday before the Theophany (2 Timothy 4:5-8; Mark 1:1-8)

Sunday of the Paralytic - Fourth Sunday of Pascha

The readings presented by the Church on this day remind us of the most fundamental teachings about what we believe and who we are called to be as Christians. As we celebrate the Falling Asleep of the Mother of God, Fr Tom tells us that the Virgin Mary is the one who embodies hearing and keeping those most basic teachings. (Dormition of the Mother of God, Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost)

Christ was obedient to His Father in all things. Fr Tom teaches us that God blesses those who are obedient to His commands and the result of loving obedience to God is the growth of the Church. (Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost)

As Christians, we have been raised to a new life with Christ in baptism. Fr Tom reminds us that as we grow, we must constantly cooperate with God's grace by asking ourselves if we truly want to be healed. (Fourth Sunday of Pascha - Healing of the Paralytic)

On the feast of the Annunciation to the Mother of God, we celebrate the good news that Jesus takes on human flesh from the womb of the Virgin Mary. In Mary's faithfulness, she becomes the icon of all believers who strive to live life in total obedience to God.

Though we have the revelation of the one God in Christ, people the world over are free to believe in the god of their choosing, or no god at all. Fr Tom reminds us that as Orthodox Christians, though we firmly believe in the right to religious freedom, we must always assert to everyone the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ, because what we believe about God matters. (Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council)