"A voice cries out: 'In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.'" - Isaiah 40:3

Marie Fatayi-Williams, a mother searching for her son who has been missing since the London bombings:

There have been streams of tears, innocent tears. There have been rivers of blood, innocent blood. Which cause has been served? Certainly not the cause of God or Allah, because God Almighty only gives life and is full of mercy.

How much blood must be spilled? How many tears shall we cry? How many mothers' hearts must be maimed? It's time to stop and think. We cannot live in fear because we are surrounded by hatred. Hatred begets only hatred. It is time to stop this vicious cycle of killing. We must all stand together, for our common humanity.

How long, Lord? How long?

I'll preface this by saying that I have never smoked, but have had many smoking friends and have sympathized with their repeated efforts to quit. Having a fairly addictive personality myself, I cannot imagine how difficult it would be for me to quit smoking if I had ever taken it up.

Having said that, I find Mike Ditka's recent comments regarding the proposed smoking ban for public places in Chicago absolutely ridiculous. Ditka--former Chicago Bear's player, coach and Chicago restaurant owner--was audacious enough to implore the Chicago City Council to "[not] impose the will of the few on the lives of the many."

Reading this story in the midst of an ongoing medical crisis has certainly heightened my visceral response. We recently discovered that Kirstin's Aunt Marj has been diagnosed with adeno carcinoma of the lung and emphysema in both lungs, resulting directly from working for years with co-workers who insisted on smoking in the office.

Aunt Marj is one of the most life-filled, generous people I have ever known and, quite frankly, it pisses me off to think that her life will be cut short because people couldn't be bothered to give a damn about anyone but themselves.

So, I say to Mike Ditka: Don't impose the will of the few on the lives of the many. If you can't enjoy a restaurant without smoking a cigar in deference to others, then perhaps your cigars have gotten the better of you.

Kirstin and I were planning to go to the south suburbs of Chicago this weekend primarily so Kirstin could be a part of her sister's baby shower. And then ...

We received a somewhat expected word on Friday afternoon that my brother and his wife had successfully delivered their fourth child and first boy (bringing the total of nieces and nephews in my family to 10: 8 nieces, 2 nephews). So, of course, we decided to visit Jeff and Melissa (my brother and his wife) and their new boy, Cole Aidan, while we were in town.

After our visit on Saturday night, Kirstin spent time with her family in Highland, IN, and I--along with Nate, a good friend from Michigan--enjoyed a brainstorming session with Grant in Evanston, IL.

Driving through Chicago on Sunday morning, Nate and I received word from Kirstin that Brianne (Kirstin's sister) had gone into labor at 2:30 that morning. We quickly scrapped plans of going to church and dedicated the day to waiting. And waiting.

We visited the Lagerway/BC household in the afternoon--which, as per usual, was absolutely wonderful--and ended up staying for six hours. In the meantime, Nate took our car back to Michigan to fulfill obligations there and we devised a scheme by which we could return to Michigan the following day. Our friend Mary gave us a ride back to Highland so we could wait with Kirstin's family.

And we waited more. Then we went to the hospital with Kirstin's family, hoping the baby would be born before visiting hours were over. Unfortunately, we had to return home to continue the wait.

Finally, at 9:06 p.m., Brianne and Charles delivered a healthy baby boy, Charles Garry Mitchell, Jr. We're going to see him now ...

For the past several months, I've been bookmarking sites, articles and other tidbits around the internet with the best intentions of spending time writing about the ideas contained within each after I had finished school. Well, I've finished school, but my "blog cue" bookmark folder is still ridiculously full and I haven't made any headway into writing about anything. So, instead of writing about each site, article or tidbit, I'm merely going to list links here (perhaps with a few comments and in no particular order).

• Economic Justice: What Should We Demand? from the Quarter 3, 2004 Public Justice Report published by the Center for Public Justice.


• The Great Black Hope: What's riding on Barack Obama? from the Washington Monthly.


• Reading the Bible like a Grown-up Child by Calvin Seerveld.


• Hallelujah! The Mac is Back from Salon.com.


• The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, an excerpt from Ron Sider's book of the same name.


• Don't Blame Wal-Mart by Robert Reich in the New York Times. Unfortunately, this article is now archived and requires a fee for download. The abstract is available, though.


• css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design. I've long needed to spend more time learning CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)--a code mechanism that allows a web designer to completely separate design code from functionality code--and this site is a good example of the possibilities.


• A Modest Proposal by Richard Mouw, suggesting that Christians should attempt to have the Beatitudes posted in public places as an alternative to the Ten Commandments.


• Spirituality for All the Wrong Reasons, an interview with Eugene Peterson that contains this gem of a quote: "I think relevance is a crock." And there's more wonderful insight to be gleaned ...


• The Mall Goes Undercover, which explores the new trend of "lifestyle centers" in commercial development.


• This New House published by Mother Jones provides several alarming statistics about home construction.


• What Bootstraps? from Commonweal.


• Individual-i. Ugh.


• Deliver us from Wal-Mart? from Christianity Today.


• Bleary Days for Eyes on the Prize. The classic PBS documentary series cannot be sold or broadcast because of issues concerning archival film footage rights.


• Transcript of Bono interview with Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune, in which Bono argues a fairly Reformational approach to rock 'n' roll. At least that's what I think ...


• Graduation and Upper-Middle-Class Guilt by Andy Whitman, a music critic who writes for Paste (among others). I have some issues with Andy's observations and many would claim that my issues are due to age. I'll just leave it at that for now ...


• Earth Pledge Green Roof Initiative.


• WYEP, a public radio station out of Pittsburgh, PA.


• Let's Roll Over by the editors of the New Pantagruel, Dan Knauss and Caleb Stegall.


• Lustron Homes, a particularly interesting house--all steel!--built during WWII.

Well, there you are. Now I can empty out my "blog cue" folder.

I temporarily disabled comments on this blog because we were getting nailed with 30 or so spam comments every day. In a few weeks, perhaps, we'll re-enable commenting.

And hopefully we'll blog more than we have been in the future ...