church of your choice

On Facebook, in order to bare your true soul and find harmony with everyone in this great wide world, you can list your religious preference. I recently got reacquainted with an old acquaintance, who chose to list this link under that heading. Iris Dement, “Let the Mystery Be” I kinda dug that. If you’re feeling [...]

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We can only wonder

I put this up in another format recently, but I love this quote attributed to Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses. I haven’t found it yet, but it’s worth digging for in there: Concepts create idols. Only wonder understands anything. Song of the day, by some trick of my ear: Gillian Welch, “Annabelle”

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This Present Dark Knight

[I'm going to talk about this as if you are among the six bazillion people who have already paid to see it, i.e., "spoilers ahead"] The Dark Knight is a great movie, and there is plenty of print to tell you so, so I’ll skip over that point. Christopher Nolan has crafted something which, as [...]

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Streets of Bling

This idealized newsfeed (HT ME) was really fun for me. It might not be all your hopes and dreams, but it got my imagination going. It also got me thinking about how we talk about heaven. A lot of our songs and language about the restoration of a broken, groaning creation amount to odd quotes [...]

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The Whole Sermon

I have not committed my vote, but I am now more interested in attending Senator Obama’s church.* Here is Rev. Jeremiah Wright addressing the National Press Club (broadcast on CSPAN and FOX News in its entirety)[after the jump]. He invokes the prophetic tradition in the Black Church in America as the full context of his [...]

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RSS’d Out

Thanks to RSS, I’ve never seen any of your cool widgets, and you’ve never seen the big red button in my blog’s margin that says “click here for free money!” But every once in a while I try to catch up with what folks had in mind for my viewing experience, and sometimes am pretty [...]

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The Gospel blah blah blah blah Batman

Batman Begins: As idealistic DA Rachel Dawes receives a kiss her lawyer boyfriend, former child sweetheart Bruce Wayne observes from sidewalk, dressed in dingy hooded sweatshirt. Viewer banter:* J: That’s so sexy when a billionaire dresses like a homeless person. If I was super wealthy that’s what I would do. It’s. . . it’s like [...]

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Why Fenelon didn’t blog

I am not at all surpirsed that your feelings of lukewarmness and your lack of attraction to the spiritual life should cast you down. Nothing can be more disheartening. You have only two things to do, it seems to me: One is to avoid all that distracts or absorbs you. By doing this you will [...]

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Beating Plowshares into War Bonds

Looking back over some of Mike Casey’s articles. Here’s a conclusion to a piece where he traces the cultural mainstreaming of Churches of Christ and the loss of the pacifist tradition; a moment of biting prophetic scholarship directed at civil religion swallowing: No longer disinherited, members of the mainstream Churches of Christ are active at [...]

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9/12

A few proverbs for the post 9/11 season (this chapter was very thought [and heart] provoking): Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know [...]

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