For the past 6 months, my wife and I have had a project. Examining and studying the BBQ of Georgia. To generate our list of the finest. No paid endorsements, just pure BBQ pleasure.

This follow on the heels of my final report on the finest steakhouses in America. Only this is a bit more specialized and provincial - Georgia only!

And here is the final tally:

1) Fincher's - in Macon
Still maintaining its longstanding place at #1. The entire experience, from meat to stew to tea to service and locale - all first rate. The real deal.

2) Dean's BBQ in Jonesboro
A surprise to us. Had not experienced it before. Simple, order from a counter, and sit in lawn chairs under a pavilion. But the food is outstanding. And they have the added bonus of homemade cakes. Not to mention the guy who runs the joint - no word to describe him.

3) Harold's in Atlanta on McDonough Blvd
A jewel of a joint, unchanged for years and located next to the federal prison just south of Turner Field and near Carver High School. Great stew. Best in Atlanta - I know, I have tried nearly all of them.


4) The Iron Pig - Jefferson, GA
A new contestant. Found it by accident while getting patio furniture reslung. 2 guys preparing and serving excellent meat and superb stew out of a trailer next to a Baptist Church on the edge of town. Caught them on the day before the fireworks festival - they were prepping a whole hog and stuffing it with full chickens before cooking. A wonderful surprise.

5) Tucker's - Macon
Not sure if this place is still open. At one time, was my favorite, but the last two times I have been, they have been closed. Still keeping them on the list in hopes that I caught them at a bad time. If they are closed, this is a major loss for Western civilization and leaves Fincher's as the last bastion of fine BBQ in Macon. Tommy Tucker is the proprietor. And this place is special if still around.

As Neda Soltan lay dying in the streets of Tehran last week, my mind turned to the memory of Jane McCrea, the young woman whose death is credited by some historians with helping the Americans defeat the British at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. Having been killed and scalped by British-allied Indian scouts in upstate New York just before one of history's most significant battles, McCrea became something of a frontier martyr and symbol of freedom. Her death served as a rallying cry for freedom among the American revolutionaries. We can only hope that the tragic death of Neda Soltan will similarly inspire those seeking regime change in Iran.

Neda Soltan, 26, had the misfortune to step out of a car as the government forces in Tehran worked to regain control of the streets and to squelch dissent in the people of Iran. In doing so, Neda was shot down, and died in the arms of a friend as a nearby colleague captured the images on video for all the world to see. Within hours, her death became a galvanizing image to display the oppression of the theocracy of Iran. She instantly, like the twenty-five year old Jane McCrea more than 200 years before her, became the defining image of young protesters demanding freedom. Now known as the Angel of Freedom, Neda is the international symbol of Iranian resistance. However, the challenges Iranian revolutionaries face will be even greater than those faced in our own Revolution.

Too few Americans understand that Islam has no category for what Americans usually call “separation of church and state.” Efraim Karsh has rightly noted the fusion of temporal authority and religious authority in the Islamic world view. The two categories are collapsed into one and have been since Islam's inception. Mohammed founded his own state and empire. He did not need to create a church. Islam is political in its very nature, not by accident but by design. The measure of whether a state is truly Muslim is the degree to which sharia law prevails.

As protesters, primarily young and college-educated, storm the streets of Tehran demanding more freedom and more Western-like values, it would be foolish for the West to forget that Western values find their roots in a Christian world view that separates the religious from the temporal. Jesus Christ Himself articulated the difference between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Caesar. Islam possesses no such philosophical underpinning, and this absence marks the greatest hurdle faced in bringing change to Iran. One cannot simply apply an overlay of Western freedoms for women, religious expression, and free speech onto an Islamic worldview that sees sharia law(with all its denials of those freedoms) as the requisite authority for any religious state.

As a result, President Obama is partly correct. Change in Iran must come from within. What Obama fails to grasp is that the change must be more theological than political. The Muslim world has reached a moment, symbolized in the young protesters, where it can finally confront the ideas of the Enlightenment. Will this be the moment for Islam to face modernity? Protesters demand it, and a government seeks to thwart it. Moments have presented themselves before, but none has been seized. Non-Muslims cannot bring the theological change necessary for Islam to enter the modern world and encounter political freedoms. However, non-Muslims can help advance that struggle from outside.

There simply is no way around America's taking a leadership role in helping to bring change in Iran, and potentially to the Islamic world. As the moral leader in the struggle against jihadism, America must seize this propitious moment. The protesters have set the table. They now look to us for help. As the streets are shut down, the media squelched, and free speech denied, still resistance springs up via the Western modes of Twitter, texting, and email. No other nation besides America can do this, and a laissez-faire approach will do lasting damage to America, the West, and the Iranian people.

However, our strategy need not include military force. Wise thinkers like George Weigel, James Woolsey, and Kenneth Timmerman, have sketched out four steps America should take. The real question is whether President Obama and his team will have the courage to pursue them now that the time has arrived so early in his administration.

First, America should massively fund resistance groups in an effort to separate the Iranian people from the oppressive Iranian regime. We can help push that change by funding resistance leaders and working behind the scenes to equip them and support them in every way. If we allow them to be crushed, the ramifications will echo for decades. People will no longer see us as leaders and moral advocates for freedom, but rather as timid, complacent, French-like Westerners who enjoy our own freedoms while quaintly dismissing the hopes and yearnings of the oppressed.

Secondly, America should labor hard with public diplomacy in the United Nations and other venues to bring shame to a government that beats, crushes, and terrorizes its own people. President Obama should not shy away from the microphone, or the teleprompter. Now is the time to use the immense public image he has created. There will likely be no other time like this for decades to come. Iran, and much more, hangs in the balance. The opportunity has come early in his Presidency. Will he act and speak with courage or will he be coy and cool? The latter will bring the crushing defeat of a people who have risen up, cried out, and looked to us for assistance. The former can push the momentum over the top and usher in regime change. Whether a new regime will entirely embrace Western values is questionable, but a new regime, backed by the people, will certainly offer a better partner for America and the West to thwart jihadism and its concomitant nuclear threats.

Third, America should continue in every way possible its broadcasting into Iran. Bombarding the Iranian people with messages of hope, freedom, and encouragement, whether by television, satellite, radio, internet, or other media, will only serve to empower the people desperately seeking sustenance for their movement.

Finally, President Obama and his team should implement the most strategic economic sanctions possible to bring the current theocratic regime to its knees. Funding resistance, and de-funding the present regime, can accelerate the dismantling of a regime intent on destroying Israel and America, and install an opportunity for new values into the Iranian society.

Jane McCrea did not die in vain. Her death contributed to the decisive American victory at Saratoga, a victory that all but sealed the fate of the American Revolution. The grisly murder of Jane McCrea inspired American soldiers to bring freedom and independence to the colonies. The horrific murder of Neda Soltan, Angel of Freedom in Tehran, can do the same. The Iranian people are inspired; the challenges are great; and only America can help seize this propitious moment to bring a new day. To fail to do so will weaken America, the West, and the ideals of freedom and tolerance, right now and for decades to come.

My two favorite emails of the week. For your reading pleasure. Some folks like it; some folks don't.

Allen Hunt

I just heard your remarks about it not being the same level of sin for killing a dog. What is wrong with you? Plus you were scolding some woman and standing in judgment- you are a hypocrite. What Vick did was make money off the suffering of a living creature not to mention torture for his sick pleasure. What the other football player did was wrong in taking a human life. They are both eveil acts.

I turned you off and will NEVER listen to you again and I will tell ALL of my animal loving friends about your stance.

Valarie

Allen

I'm paraphrasing: only men can call and Chastity Bono! That made my night, Thanks you! I'm trying to do some paperwork and I can't get focused because I'm listening to your show. I can't get focused for a few reasons

1) I'm not sure that I've had the "I'm a man moment", then I think I'm 28 and I've had many very very manly/adult situations since I was young, but I'm not sure I'm happy with where I am in life economically yet.

2) I don't have my own family that I look forward to having.

3) I don't feel fully at peace with my stance on god and church yet.

Your show is very thought provoking and refreshing in relation to life in general and the normal talk radio that I listen to (neal, rush, sean, clark and savage) Not for you but for others sake, I reference and suggest listening to your show.


Good Stuff Allen Thank you

P.S. ONLY MEN CAN CALL AND CHASTITY BONO.........HYSTERICALLY PRICELESS!!

Last night, Jon and Kate evidently shared the news that they are divorcing. I wouldn't know for sure because I was not watching. Nor will I be.

I had hoped that Americans had done the right thing and sent TLC and Jon and Kate a message that they need to end the show and save their family and kids. Viewership has been down and that is a good thing. Someone needs to focus on these children. TLC and the parents clearly are not going to do so.

Their tortuous decisions have wreaked havoc on 8 young lives. 8 kids who have every moment of their lives recorded and then shown to the nation. 8 kids with no privacy. 8 kids who now have a broken home, a single mom, and a dad who feels liberated from a concentration camp (and has the newly pierced ears to prove his new attitude).

Viewership had plummeted to a mere 3MM viewers this season after the big Memorial Day debut. But last night's show attracted a new record of nearly 11MM viewers to watch Jon and Kate announce splitsville.

This is tragic. Children come first. Not fame, not fortune, not celebrity.

Jon and Kate have made a litany of bad decisions, and now their children will pay the price.

I invite you to join me in no longer watching this disaster. Watching merely encourages TLC to continue to pimp out a family and 8 kids for their own ratings and gain.

David Letterman took days to apologize for his crude mocking of the Palin family. America took a mere 150 years to apologize for the cruelty and savagery of slavery. No one ever suggested that Congress works quickly. Sadly,this long overdue apology will achieve nothing because it lacks the most important part of a healthy apology: a request for forgiveness.

Last week, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution apologizing for slavery. The House passed a similar resolution last year, so a joint resolution on behalf of the federal government should issue forth in the coming days. For the first time, the federal government will issue those healing words: “I am sorry.”


An apology for nearly 250 years of slavery. An apology for the reign of Jim Crow. An apology for treating our brothers and sisters as less than they are: fully human. An apology for treating human beings as property. Legislatures in five states have already taken a similar step, so to the Congress, I say, “Better late than never.” Now that the Civil War has been fought, the Emancipation Proclamation declared, and the civil rights movement waged, it seems a little odd for the apology to arrive now. The cart is well down the road; and finally, the horse is attached. How much better for all of us if America had apologized first and then worked to correct the egregious moral sin of slavery? But, even arriving late, at least it has arrived.

Unfortunately, the Senate's apology leaves out the crucial component of a healthy apology. That component is not reparations. The missing component is far more important because it alone can bring the reconciliation we all yearn for and desire. The missing component? The transfer of power in the vulnerable words: “Please forgive me.”

Some, like Clarence Page, say that this apology is too little, too late, issued so long after the fact as to be rendered meaningless. Others, like Charles Ogletree and Eugene Kane, suggest that a healthy apology will include restitution and reparation payments to descendants of slaves in America. A third group shouts from the rooftops and proclaims all America's race problems a distant memory, as if the election of a black president and the issuance of an apology can erase the deep racial stain contained within blacks and whites of America.

All three voices fail to see the whole picture. All three fail to grasp the significance of an apology.

Never underestimate the power of words. Words possess the power to heal. The power to transform. Forgiveness acts much like a spiritual version of the atom. A tiny atom, when harnessed, unleashes a power greater than any other known to man. In the same way, invisible to the human eye, the noun of forgiveness looses a power forceful enough to alter radically the landscape. When properly marshaled, forgiveness releases the deep-seated pain of a wrong. It frees both the victim and the the one who has injured him from the insidious power that has broken their relationship. Forgiveness liberates both the wronger and the wrongee.

An apology is a prerequisite for reconciliation. An apology for slavery moves the ball forward. It injects a new dimension into the American struggle to become all we were created to be. Equal and with liberty and justice for all.

In order to bring reconciliation, a healthy apology includes at least four qualities: sincerity, an acknowledgment of the harm done and acceptance of full responsibility without shifting blame, an expression of remorse with a desire for forgiveness, and a willingness to make restitution.

Senators Tom Harkin and Sam Brownback sponsored the Senate resolution. The apology they crafted on our behalf, achieves three of the four qualities of a healthy apology. The missing component is the one that unleashes the power of forgiveness. The missing link is not the willingness to make restitution, as so many have noted. Rather, the gap in the resolution comes from the fact that Congress never actually asks for forgiveness. The irony of that omission is obvious. Congress ask for forgiveness?

The resolution rightly acknowledges the harm done and accepts responsibility of the federal government, speaking for the people. Whereas Africans forced into slavery were brutalized, humiliated, dehumanized, and subjected to the indignity of being stripped of their names and heritage;... Whereas the system of slavery and the visceral racism against people of African descent upon which it depended became enmeshed in the social fabric of the United States; …

The apology accepts responsibility in a sincere way: ...it is important for the people of the United States, who legally recognized slavery through the Constitution and the laws of the United States, to make a formal apology for slavery and for its successor, Jim Crow...

Restitution has already been made. An atonement for slavery has been paid in the bodies of more than 600,000 dead in the fields of the Civil War. Men laying down their lives, literally, on behalf of those laboring under oppression and brutality. Some died that others might be free. An atonement for the Jim Crow era has been ongoing in the reforms of laws and the investment of billions of dollars in federal funds over the past four decades to reduce poverty, to provide educational and economic opportunity for those who have historically been excluded, and to open doors of access to ensure equality.

However, the Congress apologizes but never explicitly asks for forgiveness. To ask for forgiveness provides the one receiving the apology to offer reconciliation. A transfer of power takes place – from the offender to the wounded. It takes two to reconcile. An apology only begins the conversation. True acceptance of the apology brings reconciliation. One party can apologize, but the other party must receive and agree to release the pain and the hurt in order for all to be healthy.

The absence of a specific request for forgiveness leaves the wound open. Those who have been wronged cannot offer forgiveness to the offender unless the offender asks for it. In other words, Congress has moved the ball forward but taken the offense off the field before crossing the goal line. The goal should be reconciliation. Anything else falls short.

I applaud the Senate for taking another step toward eradicating the legacy of slavery and segregation. However, I look forward to the day when the discussion will no longer be a dialogue articulating the damages done and wounds incurred but rather a deep act of forgiveness that brings true reconciliation. This most recent apology fails to do just that.

I love steak houses. Not chains. Locally owned and operated steak houses, especially classic, historic ones. Joints that really stand out for good food and good experiences.

After years of intense investigation and research, I now stand ready to pronounce the 5 best Steak Houses in America.


1) Keen's Chop House - NYC

Over a century old, originally located in the heart of the theater district. World famous lamb and mutton. Extraordinary steaks.

Best of all, great history. Not only the history of the joint, dating back to an early gathering place for actors and actresses. But the collection of clay pipes - home of the Clay Pipe Club. A collection of over 40,000 clay pipes, many of them stored right above you in the ceiling from the days when men (and women) would come to eat and smoke a clay pipe which they left on site for their next visit. Famous ones from Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, Douglas MacArthur, and countless others.

Professional waiters who know what they are talking about and pay attention to your every need or desire.

A truly outstanding experience.

2) The Pine Club - Dayton, Ohio

Again, a very old place, located in downtown Dayton. The steaks and onion rings are extraordinary. Old wood paneling with a classic feel. A real treasure n a surprising, non-descript place. Small door on the street is the entry way to an old-world, classic steak house.

3) Hangar One - Wichita, Kansas

A new place makes the list. Less than a year old - located adjacent to the airport in Wichita. Aviation motif with superb meat. Built like an old airplane hangar and owned by a guy whose whole family has been military aviators. Great relics and aviation history surrounds you with a club located on the third floor to watch the planes take off at the airport as well.

Very good food, very good service, very good experience.


4) McKendrick's Steak House - Atlanta, GA

Locally owned and operated with the best steaks in Atlanta. Not as well known as Chops and Bones, two other good ones in Atlanta, but serves the very finest steaks and offers superb service. Second in service only to Keen's above. Really classy joint. In Dunwoody, near Perimeter Mall.

5) Farmer Jones' Red Barn - between Lakeland and Tampa, FL

Great, old-fashioned place that never changes. Not flashy. Not classic. Just good steaks, served in a warm, homey environment. Always very good.


Best Chain (when nothing else is available): Longhorn

A surprise winner, but easily beats Outback (whose food is marginal every time) and other chains. Consistently good meat for a chain.

Nostalgia Winner: Len Berg's in Macon, GA

No longer with us. Old downtown hole in the wall with classic service, and Old South menu. One of the fine dining experiences in Georgia and superb filet mignon. I still miss it but shall always remember the experience.

I love oranges. They are pretty. They taste good. And they are even good for you. Since my hometown is Lakeland, Florida (World Citrus Capital), I also have an appreciation for the economic impact of oranges. Oranges create jobs.

But when about the composition of an orange, the specific nutritional elements contained within, or the best irrigation and environment in which oranges grow and thrive, I would plead ignorance. Even though I have walked and worked often in orange groves, even though my home was surrounded by citrus, in fact, my knowledge of oranges is superficial and merely observational.

So, too, is Obama's knowledge of faith.

For two weeks, I have been struggling to process President Obama's Cairo speech to the Muslim world. That speech reflects Obama's insipid comprehension of faith, a vapidness that is now becoming a part of so many of his speeches on matters of morals and ethics..

Were I to make grand pronouncements on oranges, anyone who knows anything about citrus would soon find me out to be a poser. Likewise, Obama's continuing pronouncements on matters of faith are reflecting poorly on his actual knowledge of it. Moreover, he is revealing the shallowness of his own personal faith, and his own lack of real formation or development. Instead of a robust, fully formed faith, what Obama is revealing is a warmed-over mush of sentimentality and nice feelings. As if all religion could be reduced merely to one or two rules (e.g., Be kind to one another). While we can afford for millions of humans to walk around with that misconception, it is not acceptable for the President of the United States to be making grand pronouncements and policy decisions about faith when he has no understanding of the issue. My ignorance of oranges is embarrassing; Obama's ignorance of faith is dangerous.

Three cases in point. And in all three I will give the prescription for Mr. Obama's spiritual and intellectual development in order to grow in faith rather than mire in mush.


Case 1: Islam and Religious History

In the Cairo speech to Muslims, President Obama says that he has encountered Muslims on three continents. I have encountered oranges on four. Does that give me any real knowledge of oranges? Not really. Again, I merely like them. I KNOW nothing substantive about them.

Obama demonstrates a rather superficial, if not simplistic, understanding of Islam and history. For example, he says, “I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam...that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment.” Offering meaningful support (beyond his questionable declaration that Islam gave us pens) is required for such a bold statement. Obama either is woefully educated or he is intentionally deceptive. The claim that Islam carried the light of learning through so many centuries is merely wrong.

Worse, however, is Obama's declaration that, “...throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality. ...Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. We see it in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition.”

Is he serious? Can he cite any real example besides this to support Islam's alleged “proud tradition of tolerance?” Any other solid examples in 13 centuries of Islamic history? More importantly, does Obama even know how Islam found its way into Andalusia and Cordoba in the first place? Through violent conquest from the east. Not through peaceful conversion. It arrived, as it always does, through the very imperialism with which Obama seeks to paint the west but fails to recognize in Islam itself.

PRESCRIPTION: For starters, he should begin with an excellent book to READ history rather than merely absorb what the politically correct, Harvard culture wants him to believe. A thorough history of imperialism and Islam's bloody role in that would be a good place to begin. Islamic Imperialism, by Efraim Karsh, and published by the Yale Press, will work nicely.

For example:

The birth of Islam...was inextricably linked with the creation of a world empire and its universalism was inherently imperialist. It did not distinguish between temporal and religious powers, which were combined in the person of Mohammed, who derived his authority directly from Allah, and acted at one and the same time as head of state and head of [religion]. This allowed the prophet to cloak his political ambitions with a religoius aura and to channel Islam's energies into... aggressive and [violent expansion]...

Case 2: Life.


President Obama's shortcomings in arriving at any kind of decision that supports life are well-known and well-chronicled. I will merely remind you of his famous quote when pushed into a corner. “Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” he said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.” And therein lies a key revelation into the malformation of his faith.

Obama's view of life and its dignity can be summarized as: Babies, children, and human lives are meaningless unless we choose to give them meaning. Children may be a blessing, or they may be a punishment. They have no inherent value in and of themselves. The unborn are subordinate to the needs and desires of the already born. As a result, unborn human life is disposable. It is not a natural outflowing of love; life is not a gift from God but rather a gift chosen by doctors or mothers; and humans are not really created in the image of God. I.e., humans are nice, but they are not all that.

PRESCRIPTION: Obama would do well to read Love and Responsibility by Karol Wojtyla, who later became Pope John Paul II. An intelligent, well-reasoned explanation of the most elementary and incontrovertible moral truths and the most fundamental values or goods, of which human life plays a crucial role. One book should do just the trick for the President to take pause about where his position stands in the vast tradition of Christian thought on human life and its dignity. Only in the last forty years of history have any Christian theologians (and a tiny fraction of them at that) taken an anti-life position as radical as the President's. Mr. Obama would do well to understand his own faith before speaking from it.


Case 3: Science and Faith

In his speech on stem cell research, President Obama revealed again his inability to integrate science and faith. He did the same thing in his inaugural address, wheh he all but declared science as absolutely and inherently good with his words, “We will restore science to its rightful place...” As if somehow science had been dethroned or delegitimized, or as if science and faith are incompatible.

The esteemed Fr. Richard John Neuhaus wrote, "It simply is not true that modern science built itself in opposition to religion...Are there doctrines of Catholicism - authoritative, binding teachings - which are logically in conflict with well-established scientific facts and theories? I do not know of any..."

Obama wants science to lead us. And moral reflection and evaluation then to follow. That is akin to playing a game of poker and making up the rules as you go. How does one know when the line has been crossed if that line is not evaluated and drawn, or at least sketched, before the game begins?

He claims to believe that science and faith are not inconsistent, but then goes on to say in defense of embryonic stem cell research, “As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering. I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research – and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly.” Agreed. The question is how and with what limits?

President Obama's priorities come later in the speech. “We will support [stem cell research] only when it is both scientifically worthy and responsibly conducted. We will develop strict guidelines, which we will rigorously enforce, because we cannot ever tolerate misuse or abuse.”

In other words, I am turning scientists loose today to pursue important research. It is important to do that research responsibly. So, while they are conducting the research, we will develop guidelines to prevent abuse. Two questions: 1) Why would you start research that is morally suspect before you have developed the moral guidelines for it? The sequence is illogical. 2) On what basis will those guidelines be set? Obama acts as if some government bureaucrat or task force will merely draft guidelines for morality with little difficulty. When the government does it, will the the truth drop down from the sky?

PRESCRIPTION: A little fiction to lighten the President's reading load as he grows in moral formation. How about Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, a spellbinding fictional thriller with many historical inaccuracies? Brown does a nice job of incorporating the old science vs. faith debate into a page-turning novel. A good statement for Obama to chew on for a moment: “Science shatters God's world into smaller and smaller pieces in quest of meaning... and all it finds is more questions.”

Does Obama really suggest that a government commission to draft moral rules of engagement for scientific research is the solution? As if all we have needed all along is an enlightened government task force to define life and its meaning for us?

So, in addition to Dan Brown , I recommend that the President read the recent writings of Dinesh D'Souza on faith, science, and Western civilization. Those will provide him the basic foundation he sorely lacks at present.

After the President reads these prescriptive works, his faith will begin to take form in his intellect. And, while I will still know nothing about oranges, our President will have some basis for the grand pronouncements he is making involving life, faith, and geo-politics. A basis that just may make the difference between life and death.

Very interesting. A new study by Georga Barna shows that 88% of Americans now say that "religion is very important to my life."

That is a shocking figure. Particularly given that the most recent Gallup poll showed only 54% of us say "faith is very important" to me. The Gallup poll has hovered around 60% for the past 15 years and is at its lowest point right now. Weird.

What gives? Is religion different from faith somehow? Is faith life seeing a new resurgence?

The recession is pushing some of us to re-evaluate what is really important in our lives. But that cannot be the whole explanation for such a large disparity between these two studies.

Barna's research also reveals that 3 out of 4 say that we are open to experiencing God in new ways and prefer to develop beliefs on our own rather than accept the beliefs in sum from a particular church or institution. We Americans are pure individualists. We like it our way. That is not always good - sometimes we need the help of others in order to discover what is true. When it comes to spirituality, the more wisdom you can gain from the wise counsel of others the better.

I'd love to hear what you think.

Been on planes recently so I have had more good time to read.

2 Recent faith books you may find interesting:

1) Five Pillars of the Spiritual Life: A Practical Guide to Prayer for Active People by Fr. Robert Spitzer

A helpful book on prayer from a Catholic perspective. Uses five pillars of spirituality to build a prayer life for an everyday believer. Sometimes a little dry in his writing, but the substance is quite good.
Five pillars for prayer being:
1) The Eucharist
2) The Beatitudes
3) Spontaneous Prayers
4) Partnering with the Holy Spirit
5) Meditational Prayer

Spitzer uses these five pillars to help you build your own prayer life in a way that suits you. He does it in a constructive way rather than just telling you all the things that you should be doing but aren't (which is how so many prayer books feel).

2) Diary of a Country Priest by George Bernanos

A novel that my daughter wanted to read and asked me to read at the same time. A fictional diary of a 19th century priest in rural France.

A very cerebral book to say the least. Some great spiritual insights. But lots of droning on at the same time. However, that may be the point: a rich spiritual life in the middle of the details of a mundane, ordinary life. What we all need, huh? But it can be difficult to read as you sort through the droning to find the pearls of spiritual wisdom.

In particular, the priest offers remarkable insight into grace and death as he himself suffers from cancer and is dying. Oddly uplifting even in the middle of a story about dying.

Also offers interesting historical perspective on late 19th century France for what it's worth. Rural and agrarian. No surprise there.

In Wichita today to meet with our station there. And my partner, Phil, is delayed from Grand Rapids by 4 hours. So I found myself with the unexpected gift of 4 hours that I would not have had otherwise.

I had time to:
1) Take my time rather than rush
2) Have a nice lunch by myself - good conversation I might add - Guess what? I was right!
3) Read
4) Make some calls I have been putting off

and

5) Get my hair cut (no jokes please - even bald guys need the trim every now and then). Now I prefer one or two man barber shops. Kind of nostalgic I suppose - but my grandfather had his own barber shop on the Ohio River decades ago and it reminds me of him to go to those joints. That is not easy to find in Atlanta, but I have found one.

However, I know nothing about Wichita. So I stopped at a Super Cuts. Only the second time ever in history that I have done that. One lady working there and no one was waiting. Not a good sign.

But I took the plunge. And for $4 extra they will shampoo your hair afterward. Never had that before. And it was GREAT! Soothing, relaxing, and refreshing. Wonderful.

Hair cut, conversation, and a shampoo for less than I get my hair cut for in Atlanta.

I think I am addicted. And I also remember that living slowly is a lot more pleasurable than being in a rush all the time (which is the bane of my existence).