Alleluia! Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death that he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So goes the Pascha Nostrum, an old hymn that Christians have sung for centuries. The liturgical […]
What Did You Give Up for Lent? Everything.
Where is God in the Midst of Our Unwilling and Unplanned Sacrifices?
How to Do Less for Lent: A Triptych
My Lenten Discipline Brought to You by Paul Rudd in Forgetting Sarah Marshall
The Best Penitential Season Ever, Or, A Lenten Kinship with the Devil
On Breaking Bones and Idealized Visions of Motherhood
Another Week Ends: the Cross of Christ, Not Giving Advice, Temptation, Jean Vanier, Pixar’s Onward, the Dating Market, and Reclaiming Moral Language
1. As we enter into Lent, Fred Sanders has a wonderful reflection on the centrality of Jesus’ crucifixion, arguing “The Cross Changes Everything.” Whether from the Apostle Paul, Charles Wesley, or the Apostle’s Creed, the salvation wrought by Jesus at Calvary is a refrain worth repeating again and again. The centrality of the Cross changes […]
REPENT!
The end is near! We’re all gonna die! Life is an exclamation! This urgency has been fully framed by the New York Times reporter whose essay “The Coming Collapse” declared: “It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp how fragile the decayed financial, social and political system is on the eve of implosion.” We […]
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 Imperfect Eye – John L’Heureux
From Picnic in Bablyon, L’Heureux’s journals from 1963-’67.
The Imperfect Eye
I saw tonight that he is on my side,
the lion. For the first time, I saw it.
And by God all the furniture got up
and danced (that hulking desk
a creditable tango) and I, though not much
on my feet, waltzed through Judah
like a Crazy-priest. Sometimes joy
is like that, coming quick as dandelions
springing to attention while the sun
shudders still—a little—from the melting
winter. Anyway here I was with lions
to account for and that desk
and questionable antics all along
(indignities of sun and dandelions
while our bones still creak with Lent)
and I thought God, what now, until
again I heard the music of the dance
again I waltzed through Judah.
“I something fear my father’s wrath” no more.
Another Week Ends: Zen Evangelicalism, Rumors of Narnia, Invisible Forces, Digital Eidolons, Liquid Bread, and Deleting Social Media
1. Say you’re jonesing for a stirring interreligious discourse this weekend — have I got the thing for you! In a great piece for the latest First Things, art historian Matthew Milliner discusses the relationship between Eastern religions and evangelical Christianity. “…it is often thought,” he says, “that evangelical Protestants have little to offer interreligious dialogue.” […]
