I love casting my mind back over all the movies I have seen to find the gems of pure truth that sometimes glint out of the most surprising places.

But for Bright Week, there's only one I can think of that seems appropriate.

          At time of writing, we are still reeling from incoming news of the bomb blasts that went off at the Boston Marathon.  News footage of twin explosions that went off within seconds of each other, reports of shattering glass, of individuals killed outright and many others injured and maimed, including young children, all combine to pummel the heart and reduce us to a state of shock.  Though the President of the United States did not use the words “terrorist act” in his initial statement to the press, others from his office did later confirm that this is being treated as an act of terror, given that the explosions seemed to have been coordinated.  Once again it seems that America is under attack.  Whatever sense of ease, safety, and complacency we may have built up in the years since the horrific events of “9-11” is now being challenged.  How should a Christian respond to all this?

If this isn’t news to you, then rejoice because maybe the under-the-radar coverage of the lack of coverage of the Gosnell murder trial is having an effect. Either that, or you read the same non-major media I do.

Are you so geek that you wonder about the legal implications of superheroes, supervillains, and--yes--zombies? Well, I found the following interesting article which had among its comments:

Turning into a zombie isn't exactly fun, but there could be one advantage: You may not be legally responsible for whoever you kill and eat while in the state. That's the verdict from Ryan Davidson, a lawyer who focuses on the hypothetical legal ramifications of comic book tropes, characters, and powers ... "It depends on how the disease works," he told The Huffington Post. "If zombies are effectively unconscious, then they would be incapable of performing voluntary actions and thus immune to criminal liability (or civil liability, for that matter). The zombies in the most recent 'I Am Legend' movie appear to be fully conscious, if perhaps a bit aggressive, so they could potentially be found liable. But in most others, probably not."

The recent TV mini-series on the History Channel, "The Bible," proved to be a big hit as it cleverly coincided with the preparation period before the Western celebration of Pascha. No less than 10 million people followed through each of the 5 episodes of what was supposed to be a sort of Reader's Digest version of the history contained in the sacred scriptures.

Ten million people is a lot of people to follow a Bible-based show, and I wondered how come, in a society that is as secularized and cross-cultural as ours, we can still find that many people to be still interested in what the old Bible has to say?

After 5 hours and 53 minutes of grueling tennis, a man stops, smiles, and then crosses himself in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He does so to thank the One who is responsible for getting him from the war-torn land of Kosovo to the number one spot in men’s world tennis.

My daughters and I were excited to learn that we would have the opportunity to preview Jane G. Meyer's latest book The Hidden Garden: a Story of the Heart. We read it four times the afternoon we received our copy of the book. My daughters are 8 and 4 years old, and I'm old enough not to tell my age, so we all took something different from it, but we also agreed it was a good book. This is a book that I feel privileged to have in our library. It is one that we will read over and over, that we will share with friends, and it is one that I hope one day many years from now to pull out and read for some grandchildren. It is a book that I predict will become an Orthodox children's classic.

"Only 3% of the world's children live in the United States, but Americans buy more than 40% of the world's toys."  This was the staggering statistic my fifth-grade daughter presented to our family while reading her school subscription to TIME For Kids.

The two young men who were accused of raping an unconscious 16-year-old woman during an August party in Steubenville, Ohio have been found guilty.

 “Kansas is full of good men. I don’t want to be a good man…I want to be a great one!”

Thus Oscar Diggs, a.k.a. Oz the Great and Powerful, small-time carnival magician, turns down his chance to fight for the love of a lovely young woman… a chance to be a “church-going man,” a man with a family. Goodness is too ordinary for Oz’s egotistical devotion to performance and his hopes of fame and wealth.

(Warning-- spoilers for the movie herein!)