We have traveled (less this year than others) through the days of Christmas feasting, arriving like the Magi at Epiphany. This is a blessing…
Tag: Literature
Words Destroy or Hallow
“Let’s put him on blast!” I hadn’t heard the phrase before, but I instantly knew what it meant: whatever the business’s misstep had been,…
The Startling Poetry of Madeleine L’Engle
It is startling to encounter words that easily puncture what troubles us, in a moment aching for the holy iconoclasm of the poetry of Madeleine L’Engle.
Aaron Perry ~ Desire and Duty in Everyday Life: The Narrative of Ethics
“There is membership not in what is owed to ourselves, but in what is owed to Christ because we are now in him.”
Wesleyan Accent ~ Not Yet Fully Awake: Dr. Matthew Milliner
And in our gospel passage, Mary of course – like all of us on this side of death – is not yet fully awake. She makes first contact with the resurrected Jesus, and it’s about as awkward as Peter embarrassing himself by trying to pitch a tent on Mount Tabor. Mary’s problem is that she thinks Jesus is dead, and when she sees that he’s gone, she consoles herself by saying, “they have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
Philip Tallon ~ Make Buildings that Won’t Be Burnt Up
A wise art teacher used to say, “Make art that won’t be burnt up.” He meant, make art that will outlast the last judgment. Make art that will count as one of the “glories of the nations” brought into the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:26). Beauty attracts us, even when our reasons are unconvinced.
Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ The Terrible Precipice of Knowing: Black Holes, Enlightenment, and the Divine
There is a moment you stand on the brink, or the brink stands on you. The inexorable draw pulls you in, like gravity, like…
Aaron Perry ~ Self-Consciousness vs Self-Awareness
Good leadership requires self-awareness: a leader knowing herself by acknowledging her gifts and limits to set herself up for success.
Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ The Pain of Misalignment: God and the Disordered Body
“We are not only impoverished in love; our loves are disordered, out of alignment. We can attempt to cushion them as much as we want; only realigning misplaced joints will relieve the pain, though.”
Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ The Holy Spirit in Liminal Spaces
When everything is turned inside-out, a jumble of items cascading from a moving box or a partially rearranged room in upheaval, then you can…