By Wayne Allensworth My carpenter father once told me that I was thinking too much. He had taken me to work with him and set out a task for me, and I was moving far too slowly to suit him. I was maybe 12 or so, so it was probably a demolition job. I was pausing, as if I was facing resistance from the wood and sheetrock that opposed me. I was eyeballing the enemy and gauging every blow. Daddy was...
By Wayne Allensworth “AI will replace humans for most things”—Bill Gates More than once, I’ve written that the American Remnant cannot grow complacent or indulge in triumphalism after President Donald Trump’s stunning political comeback in November. It’s all good fun to watch Fox News personalities mock the “word salads” of Kamala Harris or again state the obvious — that we all know the...
By Wayne Allensworth It surprises me that after decades of combating the left, many conservative pundits and commentators still don’t seem to get it — “get it” as in understand the assumptions that underlay leftist ideology. Those assumptions regard something at the core of human experience, something that has been with us as long as humans have existed. The problem we face is not one that can be...
By Wayne Allensworth On Easter Sunday before the service, I was sitting in church and watching the congregants come in. What I saw gave me some cause for hope. A few of the ladies wore hats — “Easter bonnets,” we called them in the past — and low and behold, a few of the children were dressed up. Dresses, ties, little jackets. It’s not that I think God cares what people wear. It’s about us...
By Wayne Allensworth A scene near the end of David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai resonates with the older me. Colonel Nicholson, played by the great Alec Guiness, is walking the length of the bridge built by British soldiers in a Japanese POW camp under the colonel’s supervision. He pauses and looks out over the waters of the river and notes that he has had a good life and career, but that...
By Wayne Allensworth It’s difficult to imagine now, but when the Apollo 11 lunar module set down in the Sea of Tranquility all those years ago, Americans were fixed on their TV screens, awed, fascinated, and, in some cases, disoriented by the momentous conclusion of the space race. I recall gathering with neighbors around a TV and watching the somewhat grainy broadcast with the sense of adventure...
By Wayne Allensworth Jacob’s Ladder (William Blake) All good things — and the bad ones, too — come to an end. Everything does. But it can’t be any other way. I was thinking along those lines while my wife and I were “taking down” (as opposed to “putting up”) Christmas, that is, the decorations, this year. We like to have a festive house for that wonderful, evocative, and often, poignant...
By Wayne Allensworth Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. John 12:27 On the day my father collapsed in my house, which led to a painful and long dreaded decision on my part, I talked to our pastor, and then to a cardiologist. Daddy had trouble breathing. The emergency room staff gave him something that stabilized...
By Wayne Allensworth Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. — John 8:12 Written in the fourth century BC, Plato’s Republic includes the oldest recorded account of what Dr. Sam Parnia, author of Lucid Dying, calls “recalled experiences of death” (RED). In that account, a Greek...
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world. — Max Weber: Essays in Sociology By Wayne Allensworth I craned my neck to see the magnificent ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I felt the exhilarating sensation of a tingle running through my scalp as I gazed at the Creation, the Fall, the Expulsion from the...
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