It has now been over 23 years since Wallace penned the inimitable words: “Sentiment equals naïveté on this continent [and] cynicism and naïveté are mutually exclusive.” He explained, “What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human (at least as conceptualized) […]
Let Us (Not) Run the Race
This one was written by Grace Leuenberger. Last month I joined more than 20,000 people on the starting line of the Pittsburgh Marathon and Half Marathon. With about eight minutes before the start of the race, I pushed my way through the masses to the front of Corral A to join the group that would […]
Whatever It Takes: Friendship and Avenging the Fallen
This one’s for Kristin and Anna; Andy, Blake, Caleb, Chris, Jeff, Nathan, Reed, and Trevor. Some spoilers follow. “If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him [his friend, Etienne Boetie] I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was […]
The In-Between: Sufjan Stevens and the Anticipation of Holy Saturday
Thankful for this reflection from Kelly Reed. I’m not sure what I expected from turning thirty. (I suspected there would at least be a dog in the picture…alas, no). My other friends in their thirties have moved steadily through the phases of adulthood. They’ve developed careers, gone to grad school, taken managerial roles. Single friends […]
The Straight Road Out of a Buried World
November 11 came and went as unexceptionally as any Sunday ever does, a day living under the permanent shadow of Monday, almost exclusively spent hoping against hope to recuperate before the work week resumes. Most Sundays, however, don’t mark one hundred years since the armistice that halted the First World War and gave the day […]
When Obligation Freezes the Feelings: Sensing God with C.S. Lewis
This one comes to us from Scott Dalton. I thought I saw how stories of this kind [fairy tales] could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the […]
Death, Critique, Heaven, and Hell
Last spring, I finished my undergrad, where I drug myself through a severely disoriented and disorienting thesis. Among the many lessons I learned in the process, I discovered something that deeply hindered my academic writing: I hated it. This revelation surprised me because I entered that research project believing I liked it and did it […]
Snatching Defeat from the Esophagus of Victory
I. Y’all, I’m going to be real with you: last Thursday night, I experienced something that made me feel more intensely depressed than I have felt in a really, really long time. What happened, you ask? Did someone I love pass away? Did I lose my job or break up with my girlfriend? Did I […]
Memories from the Future: A Word on Abandoned Houses, Nostalgia, and the Hope of the World
Grateful for this incredible piece by Nate Mills: When I was 3 or 4 I had an apocalyptic vision. It may not have been as otherworldly as the Ancient of Days appearing in resplendent glory like in Daniel 7, but it was unmistakably surreal. My family was taking a road trip from our home in […]
Imagining Worst Case Scenarios with a Hellfire Therapist
Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith. I don’t agree at all. They are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the Passion of Christ. – C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm When my son was almost three […]
Everybody Else’s Biggest Problem: You Just Can’t, Okay?
Welcome to the fourth installment of act three of author Ted Scofield’s series on everybody else’s biggest problem but your own. If you missed one or more of the previous installments, the entire series can be found here. In Terminator 2, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s titular cyborg is about to kill two innocent civilians in a dark parking lot, […]
At Your Service: Thoughts on Downton Abbey, and Life
I dread my kids getting sick–and not just because I hate to see them suffer. So much for empathy, right? Our latest cavalcade of illnesses–recurrent ear infections, nasty colds, and a violent stomach virus–coincided with the wrapping-up of the series Downton Abbey. And don’t think for a second that the deep cosmic significance of that […]
