The Life of the Other

Going over the selection lists of books ordered for the library, I saw that we had ordered Night of the Confessor: Christian Faith in an Age of Uncertainty, by the Czech theologian Tomáš Halík.  Reading the excerpts and reviews on Amazon, I was intrigued.  Like Pope Benedict XVI, Halik, while he is orthodox, does not shy away from the difficulty of making faith meaningful in the 21st century.

All my life as a Christian I have been caught in the crossfire between social justice and traditional piety.  I find Tomáš Halík tremendously encouraging and fresh.  His essay, The Post-Tolerance Age, will give you a taste.

I watched the Brother Cadfael series on PBS years ago, but I have only recently begun to sample the vast genre of medieval mystery fiction.  I had read some mysteries by Bernard Knight set in Wales and Malaya in the 1950's, and liked them enough to try his Crowner John medieval stories.  I have been spicing my reading with a couple of non-fiction titles, Life On The English Manor, by H. S. Bennett, and Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, by R. W. Southern.

I started a bibliography for a future display, but this list by N. S. Hurt on his Historical Mystery Fiction page is all anyone could want.

Fr. Robert Barron on Pope Benedict XVI

The World is not lost for words telling us the meaning of Benedict's papacy.  It is refreshing to hear Father Barron on what Benedict has tried to achieve as the leader of the Catholic Church, on its own terms.

New Stapler

Our new stapler came yesterday.  This is a Uline H-704 plier stapler. It looks very well-made, and it has a satisfying heft in the hand.

I wasn't expecting a "plier" stapler, but it may be the better choice.  Many people use manual "desktop" staplers, which are meant to be used resting on their bases, by gripping them in their hands.  I think that this eventually puts them out of alignment.  The Uline is built to be used this way.

I hope that it won't be hard to use for people with small or weak hands.  We shall see.