This is a week when I’ve been thinking about old friends who are, as it happens, ex-friends. Maybe it’s a special category of friendship. I’ve devoted a recent column to David, who was a valued philosophical colleague. Together we shared … Continue reading → The post Where Are the Ex-Friends Now? appeared first on Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column.| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
A Good Look at an Old Evil | The title of this column plays off my first book, A Good Look at Evil. There I revisited some of the main...| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
What a strange era we find ourselves in. 2025 is, in many ways, comparable to the world war years. Reminders of human mortality assault us daily. Still, death has always been with us, as Seneca the Younger observed in the … Continue reading → The post We Are Not Alone in Death first appeared on Mitch Teemley.| Mitch Teemley
The other day I scanned the internet for news of ex-friends who’d stayed significant in my memory. “We quarreled,” as French philosopher Sartre said about one former friend, the philosopher Merleau-Ponty, “a quarrel does not matter. It’s just one more … Continue reading → The post Ave Atque Vale (Hail and Farewell) appeared first on Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column.| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
Doran Spielman’s When the Stones Speak: The Remarkable Discovery of the City of David Is the Bible a history book? Did the stories in it (or some of the more literal-sounding ones) really happen? Or are we modern people obliged … Continue reading → The post When the Stones Speak appeared first on Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column.| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
The Fork in the Road | A realization visited me the other day. It had to do with lost friendships. I’d always pictured these...| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
In Liaisons Dangereuses, the eighteenth-century epistolary novel of cynicism by Choderlos de Laclos, the plot turns around two aristocrats who co-conspire to seduce their unsuspecting victims. Their purpose is not so much to gratify sexual desire as to enjoy the … Continue reading → The post Women Enemies and Women Friends appeared first on Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column.| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
The Story | “The crucial thing is the story.” That is what I claim in A Good Look at Evil, my book which holds that the person who...| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
Image: Shutterstock The phone call came out of the blue. It was from a distressed family member who had just suffered a close and tragic personal loss. That in itself was obviously difficult enough to deal with. What was really upsetting was the unauthorized dissemination of that heart-rending event through Echovita, (or Echovita Canada) including … Continue reading "Echovita is Still Going Strong: The Sleazy (but Apparently Legal) Business of Monetizing Obituaries Without Consent"| Hugh Stephens Blog
The other night I had a dream in which I met a woman whom I used to regard as a friend. But she’d become an ex-friend – in the following fashion. An ill-wisher who’d known me from my earliest days … Continue reading → The post In Quest of Lost Friendship appeared first on Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column.| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
Reincarnation: Anne Frank and Me | Some years back I read a book with the title, And the Wolves Howled: Fragments of Two Lifetimes...| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
I don’t normally link to my short stories here, but I’m proud of a new one called “Lost Animals” that went up earlier this week. It’s about a man hired by private clients to clear houses of ghosts, not using supernatural equipment but a baseball bat. He’s been storming into abandoned homes, haunted offices, auto-repair … Continue reading "Lost Animals"| BLDGBLOG
Readers of this column may recall that I had a near-death experience fairly recently. Not the good kind, where you meet all the dear ones who’ve gone before you up the golden stairway. Rather, the kind where you get to … Continue reading → The post Death and the Doctors appeared first on Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column.| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
The Puzzle of Hannah Arendt | The career of Hannah Arendt is surely one of the oddest on record. Doubt has been cast on claims for which...| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
In what at least one person has referred to as, quote, “the best movie scene I’ve ever watched,” in this part of Avengers: Endgame, we see the Avengers assembling for their final battle. On its own, that would be cool enough. But this scene is especially poignant because many of those gathering having just been resurrected from the dead. Five years before this moment in the MCU, half of the universe was snapped from existence. The post Life After Life After Death appeared first on Con...| Conciliar Post
In this scene from The Good Place, the gang arrives at the Good Place and finds that it’s even better than they imagined it would be. Flying puppies, the energy you had when you were twelve, and the joy of meeting people you’ve always wanted to meet—I mean, who doesn’t want to end up in a place like that? But what’s the Good Place actually like? Is it like this? Or is it different somehow? The post The (Actual) Good Place appeared first on Conciliar Post.| Conciliar Post
At one point in The Good Place, Eleanor and the gang find themselves in the Medium Place. Now if we think of the Bad Place as more-or-less hell and the Good Place as more-or-less heaven, then the Medium Place is whatever lies in between. It’s neither good nor bad—it just kind of is, it just exists. And while in The Good Place the Medium Place is created for one, precisely down-the-middle person who deserved neither The post The Medium Place appeared first on Conciliar Post.| Conciliar Post
When I was in high school and trying to figure out the whole following Jesus thing, I encountered the guy in this video. He was a young, up-and-coming pastor at a church a couple hours north of us, a guy who asked the kind of questions that I was asking and gave answers that I was able to understand. He helped a lot of my friends think about what it meant to follow Jesus. And The post Does Love Win? appeared first on Conciliar Post.| Conciliar Post
The Ancient Egyptians held a deep-seated belief in the afterlife, and their spirituality and mythology… The post The Indestructibles and the Ancient Egyptian Journey to the Afterlife appeared first on Historic Mysteries.| Historic Mysteries
The vast and impossibly ancient necropolis in Saqqara in the Egyptian desert is filled with… The post Trendsetter: Djoser and the First Pyramid in Egypt appeared first on Historic Mysteries.| Historic Mysteries
The stunning Mold Gold Cape is from a forgotten time, hidden in a grave at the heart of the Hill of the Goblins. But who was buried there in such finery?| Historic Mysteries
According to Catholic doctrine, good people get into heaven. So, where were the good people before Heaven, and Christianity, was a thing? They were in Limbo.| Historic Mysteries
Reading Time: 3 minutes The Price of Business Digital Network has a new series of outstanding commentaries from thought leaders. This is one in that series. Brownell Landrum| USA Daily Standard
Luke 16 opens with an interesting story Jesus told of a steward who wasn’t doing his job. He wasted his master’s goods says the passage. His inattentiveness was discovered and his employer was ready to fire the man. This served as a wakeup call for the steward. He examined himself – perhaps for the first […]| GGWO Church Baltimore
What Is Truth? | The question, famously put to Jesus by Pontius Pilate, was prompted by Jesus’ self-report that he had come to bear witness...| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
A Writer's Conscience | I just finished reading – actually skimming – what I’m tempted to name as the worst book in the history of the...| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
Most Christians don’t feel like they need an answer to the question, “what is salvation?” For them, the answer is simple: getting to go to…| Rival Nations
“Say no goodbyes to those we love, Though they have passed from view. Our mortal eyes seem not to see The truth that our hearts do. Love is of the spirit. It exists beyond …| Conscious Companion®
If you thought the weather was a dull talking point before, the hallway of small talk just got a lot more narrow, friend.| Man Enough
I don’t normally link to my short stories here, but I’m proud of a new one called “Lost Animals” that went up earlier this week. It’s about a man hired by private clients to clear houses of ghosts,…| BLDGBLOG
