Manners, Warrior Women, Gay Marriage, Essential Oils and Calvinism

In my Perspectives Column at the Colson Center, I have started a series on what Edmund Burke has to teach us about good manners. The first installment in this series is online here. As this series unfolds, I will be going deep into the reasons why manners are important for civilization.

On the website 'Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy', I have contributed an article looking at the problem of 'gay marriage' from an Eastern Orthodox perspective. You can read my article by clicking here.

The illustration from my article
'Mixed Companies'

I persuaded my friends at Salvo Magazine to put my last article online, so that those who are too poor to subscribe to the magazine can still read my latest contribution. The article is titled 'Mixed Companies' and explores the implications in the Pentagon's decision to allow women to officially serve in ground-combat positions. 

As our family continues to enjoy using essential oils, I have been posting quite a bit about essential oils on my other blog 'Grasping the Essence.' Some of my recent posts include an article about using essential oils to help with headaches and migraines, an article about citrus oils, a post about essential autumn oils to help fight colds and flu, and a post about how friends of mine can become wholesale customers with Young Living essential oils.

Finally, my friend Brad Belschner has a fascinating discussion on his Facebook wall right now about what is allegedly a big problem in the deep structure of Calvinism. Is Calvinism able to adequately deal with human grief? Is there a significant difference between Calvin and Calvinism? Does reformed theology present a de-historicized account of God's sovereignty? These are some of the many questions that are being addressed (from all sides of the theological spectrum) by this fascinating discussion.