On the Square Today

Peter J. Leithart on the Christian origins of Islam :

Near the bottom of the pit of hell, Dante encounters a man walking with his torso split from chin to groin, his guts and other organs spilling out. “See how I tear myself!” the man shrieks. “See how Mahomet is deformed and torn!” For us, the scene is not only gruesome but surprising, for Dante is not in a circle of false religion but in a circle reserved for those who tear the body of Christ. Like many medieval Christians, Dante views Islam less as a rival religion than as a schismatic form of Christianity.

Also today, Micah Mattix’s confessions of a Protestant Christmas tree amateur :

This part of the Appalachians is Christmas tree country, and our 1920s home came with a plot of three hundred Fraser firs and the first fertile land we had had in five years (not counting a flowerbed in Connecticut that we had to leave before the spring, though we were told it did very well). We were chomping at the bit, as it were, to plow, plant, weed, tend, and trim every green thing on our humble two acres.