miscellany [ mis-uh-ley-nee], noun
1. a miscellaneous collection or group of various or somewhat unrelated items
2. a miscellaneous collection of literary compositions or pieces by several authors, dealing with various topics, assembled in a volume or book

The Screwtape Election. If you've not read C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, you should. It's a funny piece of fiction describing an experienced demon, Screwtape, offering advice to his bumbling idiot relation, Wormwood, on how to be a better demon. It's hilarious. It's light, but it also reveals a lot about humanity and the ways of the world. This article uses one of the premises in the book--interestingly one inherited from Martin Luther--and applies it to our upcoming election. That premise is this, one of the things the Devil hates aside from Scripture is ridicule. The author suggests the non-stop ridicule of the Left from Donald Trump is exactly what needs to happen. As he says in his conclusion, "Trump’s vaudeville patter and his penchant for coining memorable monikers for his adversaries reveal the realities of misgovernance by progressive elites better than a thousand debates. His scorn does what is needed. It slights the Screwtapes in our midst and pushes them into a state of self-consuming outrage and wounded pride. Let’s carry on and keep the cheerful scorn coming. It’s the Screwtape Election."

Lessons from Beer Halls. Two from First Things this week, though not intentionally. While this article is an appeal to educators and communities to build beautiful schools out of a love of learning, beauty, and goodness, the case is equally made for churches. Building practical (i.e. ugly) schools and churches is a failure on the part of the community that built it. The beer halls the author visits and describes in this article are welcoming and beautiful, even though they don't 'have' to be. Why? "This (aesthetic) works precisely because the founders, funders, and architects of beer halls attend to human beings as embodied creatures who need more than ugly 'utilitarian' structures. They build, in other words, from a fundamentally true anthropology, even if the brewers are complete atheists. Why are not more churches and schools built with this true anthropology in mind? An ugly school building might be cheap, but it does not serve the ultimate purposes of education. As T. S. Eliot says of society as a whole, a good school is one 'in which the natural end of man—virtue and well-being in community—is acknowledged for all, and the supernatural end—beatitude—for those who have the eyes to see it.' The end of education is arete, excellence and human flourishing leading to worship for those with eyes to see." As we continue to plan for our own eventual building project, let us not lose sight of the fact that we are not building a building simply for the sake of assembling people, we are building a building to glorify God and lead people to worship!