Two Feather Hobbits

“I don’t mean to pick on English departments today, but if the head of such a department at some soft Christian college has a bumper sticker that says “Not All Who Wander Are Lost,” and the background of the bumper sticker is decorated with stardust, and the driver of this particular Volvo things my language here is intemperate, injudicious, and unbecoming a Christian minister, then what we are actually dealing with is a cowardly refusal to read the situation. And I don’t care if he is published and has tenure. I don’t care if he is a two-feather hobbit.”

No Such Thing, pp. 124-125

Meditative Preparations

“Each one of your teenagers today is walking around with Bourbon Street in his pocket, or in her purse. And in many cases, always downloaded. You are driving off to church, and your (inexplicably sullen) teenager is in the way back, AirPods in, preparing his heart for worship by listening to “effin’ on the blim blam, n-word in the vocative plural!”

No Such Thing, pp. 110-111