After reading a recent CNN article titled, “Americans are asked for more sacrifices as coronavirus keeps spreading,” a thought suddenly popped into my head: “What are you giving up for Lent? Oh, everything.” The timing of this “sacrifice” has God’s timing written all over it. Here we are each year giving up what we think […]
How to Do Less for Lent: A Triptych
1 There is a meme going around Episcopal Facebook™ about Lent. It is not surprising that this meme has found traction in the modern church that is more Pelagian than it realizes. With sermons and programs that focus on what you can do for God (note: it is always more than what you are currently doing), […]
The Best Penitential Season Ever, Or, A Lenten Kinship with the Devil
This year, my Lent was going to be the greatest in the history of all penitential seasons. I wanted to do something manageable that might make a big impact on my overall life: I had decided that I would go to bed every night at 9:30pm. This seemed achievable and wise. Not overly spiritual or […]
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 […]
Waiting for the Hammer to Fall in Lent
If you care about Lent, this is a time of dread. No booze or no dessert or no social media. No fun. My own take is that Lent helps us understand Good Friday, which, to me, makes death exquisitely real. An easier way would have been a heavenly rapture of Our Lord and Savior: Divine […]
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.” […]
“Have a Token Lent” and Other Seasonal Suggestions from a Weary Jesuit
John L’Heureux was a Jesuit for 17 years before he quit in ’71 and got married. He’s also written an insane amount of fiction and poetry which I am slowly working through, and loving. I first encountered his work with The Rise and Rise of Annie Clark from a New Yorker issue last autumn and am […]
Lent Doesn’t Make Sense When Incarnation > Salvation
Instinct and revelation do not typically occupy the same space. For a revelation reveals truth that we otherwise would miss. In this regard, religion is most interesting when it offers ideas that are distinct and/or counterintuitive, when it brings something new to bear upon the old. In particular, the idea that God cares for the […]
The Death of Control
My wife has one unrelenting addiction: “Jeopardy!” If there is time, she will watch, and if I am there, I will sit through it. In his 35 years on the syndicated nightly show, Alex Trebek has become an icon. His hushed superiority, muffled humor, and obvious judgments of the players and the game are, now, […]
