-
REFLECTING ON CHURCH IN TRIESTE, ITALY
THE LIMITS OF THEOLOGY We’ve been traveling. You may have noticed the radio silence from me. Or not. I had almost forgotten it was Sunday. Easy to do when you are traveling, nine time zones from home. We were wandering the streets of Trieste, Italy, the lovely town on the shores of the Adriatic. We…
-
WHEN THINGS FALL APART
HOPE IN A TIME OF DISINTEGRATION Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. W.H. Yeats, “The Second…
-
JESSE JACKSON AT CALVIN SEMINARY
JESSE JACKSON AT CALVIN SEMINARY When I was a seminary student, the late Jesse Jackson came to speak. In my memory, likely faulty, it was my first year at Calvin Theological Seminary, placing Jackson’s appearance in late 1968 or early 1969. Only months before, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.…
-
THE IMPULSE TO EXPLAIN
Seeker Services In 1975, Bill Hybels, a Chicago youth pastor with roots in the Christian Reformed Church, started a movement to bring new people into the church. He proposed a style of service stripped of anything that might put unchurched people off: no crosses on the walls, no old hymns, not much scripture. A message…
-
GARDEN STORIES
Pondering the Story For years I have pondered the garden story in Genesis 2-3. The story is part of a larger conversation in the ancient Middle Eastern culture about what it means to be human, including such stories as Adapa and the Gilgamesh. To be human, so goes the ancient conversation, is to be between: between the animal…
-
SUPERSTITION
How an Old Distinction between Religion and Superstition Speaks to Today SUPERSTITION I’ve been thinking lately about superstition. Not the funky 1972 Stevie Wonder hit, although it would make a great soundtrack for this piece: Very superstitious/Writing’s on the wallVery superstitious/Ladder’s ‘bout to fall Got the beat in your head? Hum it as you read.…
-
MORE (MOSTLY SHORT) NOTES ON HOW TO READ THE BIBLE WITH JOY
MORE (MOSTLY SHORT) NOTES ON HOW TO READ THE BIBLE WITH JOY A few posts back I made a few suggestions about how to read the Bible with joy and a certain confidence. Five simple suggestions: To those five suggestions for reading the Bible, allow me to add five more, beginning with: 1. Laugh occasionally. The Bible…
-
CONTINGENCY
A Lenten Meditation Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Ash Wednesday is about contingency—not contingency in the technical philosophical sense but the earthbound, timebound lives we live. As we are marked by ashes, the priest says, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.” In his conversion poem, “Ash Wednesday,” T.…
-
SABBATH IN A TIME OF GREED: IN PRAISE OF LIMITS
Limits In a fine new book on the Sabbath (Israel’s Day of Light and Joy: The Origin, Development, and Enduring Meaning of the Jewish Sabbath. Eisenbraun’s, 2024), Jon Levenson lingers on Exodus 23:10-12. The passage begins with the sabbatical year: Six years you shall farm your land and gather its produce. For the seventh you…