Bob Hayes Online

For years, I’ve assumed that the reason that the music sucks in Catholic services was that some previous Pope had lost a bet with our Protestant brethren. I was never sure of the details - it’s a hierarchy, after all - but it was fairly obvious that we had agreed: any Catholics showing musical talent would be pointed towards the Protestants instead, so that there would never be good music in a Catholic church.

Now we see it was actually a cunning plan - turns out good church music may undermine the experience over time by raising unrealistic expectations. Those Popes, they’re clever ones.

H/T Evangelical Outpost.

Well, he says it nicer.

Not unrelated.

(H/T Evangelical Outpost.)

Because everyone is stupid. Even the people who came up with this list fall into these traps.

(H/T Evangelical Outpost.)

Most parents agonize a little bit about Santa Claus. What do we tell our kids? Religious people, especially, have to consider the nature and nurturance of belief, and what we owe our kids. This is being discussed In the Agora. Sample:

I am of the very un-festive opinion that lying to your children about anything is bound to have negative consequences, but particularly when it involves a figure like Santa. In the eyes of some this makes me a Grinch or Scrooge, but I’m not sure that’s altogether a bad thing.

I am in agreement. It doesn’t ruin Christmas for the kids, and they don’t generally ask until they’re ready to know. My daughter is five; she still sort of believes, but when she asks me, I tell her the truth. I tell it gently and in a way supportive of loving Christmas and Santa and thinking Rudolph and Clarise is the greatest love story in history - because that’s all mythology and storytelling that she embraces.

(Hat tip: Evangelical Outpost.)

…through a practice of constructive slovenliness. This is genius.

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Here’s a weird one.

Do you believe in reincarnation? (George S. Patton did, you know.)

In late 1977, the plane carrying the rock group Lynrd Skynrd crashed into a swamp outside of McComb, Mississippi. The crash killed “Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, Steve’s sister Cassie (a backup singer), and road manager Dean Kilpatrick.” One male rock legend, a lesser but still excellent male musician, and that musician’s no doubt talented but professionally unremarkable sibling. (And the road manager, Dean Kilpatrick.)

McComb is a town of about 13,000 people. It is a complete no-account burg, or would be if it weren’t for the connection with the famous plane crash - and for one other thing. McComb is the birthplace of a number of notable musicians, from King Solomon Hill (1897) on. After 1950, no musicians of account were born in McComb - except for Britney Spears (1981), Brandy (1979) and Brandy’s younger brother Ray J (also 1981).

That is, a rock legend, a lesser but still illustrious talent, and someone who hasn’t quite made the big time on their own, but who does have a connection to fame. All born within a few years of a tragedy that saw the deaths of some of rock’s great lights, within a few miles of the birthplace of the latter-day talents.

There are two possible reactions to this story. (Well, more than two, but two that lots of people would fall into.)

1) “This is weird. That’s too many coincidences to just be random chance. Something mystical or ghostly is going on.”

2) “This is weird. But it’s just a random concatenation of factors.”

Which of these reactions do you have? Or do you think something entirely different?