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ChurchCultureEssaysTheology

Defense and Discernment: Bearing Witness in Suspicious Times

https://youtu.be/8bFkjb3txFY We live in suspicious times. I wore a mask during my most recent trip to the grocery store. As I was checking out, I noticed an unmasked woman glaring at me. No words were exchanged, and yet I got the distinct feeling that she was saying something like: “oh, so you’re one of them.” It is entirely possible that I misread her body language, or that I was feeling overly sensitive, or that she was the one feeling judged…
June 18, 2020
ChurchCultureEssaysTheology

The Life You Save May Not Be Your Own: Loving Our Distant Neighbors in a Time of Pandemic

https://youtu.be/NtMgj5fZN0A On March 27, the New York Times reported that although in some respects COVID-19 was uniting Americans in a common experience, it was also exposing fractures in our society: “A kind of pandemic caste system is rapidly developing: the rich holed up in vacation properties; the middle class marooned at home with restless children; the working class on the front lines of the economy, stretched to the limit by the demands of work and parenting, if there is even…
June 17, 2020
Essays

Ancient Paths For a New Future: A Sabbatical Reflection

This is what the LORD says: "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jeremiah 6:16 Out beyond the stacked stone walls, beyond the moldboard plow perched upon it, beyond the rocky soils of the now dormant cornfield, beyond the flock of sheep picking about the leftover harvest trimmings, a fiery explosion of fuchsia blossoms detonates, shattering the muted…
June 16, 2020
Poetry

Refracted

by Debra L. Freeberg What happens at the end of life to the stored treasures of knowledge and memory? To the books of language fruit dripping with meaning, consequence, and flavor. To the closely held memories of touch and kiss and embrace. To snapshot beauty: a flicker of creation glory stored across decades of memory. What happens to the sum of our experiences, gifts so essential to the vital force of the breathing world but rendered inaccessible by a final…
July 26, 2019
Inside Out

Dusty Endings

Though Easter was a huge deal in my family, we never did Ash Wednesday when I was growing up. No service, no imposition of ashes. And although my parents adored the Advent season (during which we had many family traditions, including daily lighting of our Advent wreath and daily chocolate ending from our Advent calendars), Lent was completely ignored. (Lest you think we were complete spiritual slackers, we still had daily family devotions, as we always did.) Naturally, we didn’t…
May 1, 2019
Poetry

The Return of the Prodigal

after Henri Nouwen’s studyof Rembrandt’s paintingof Christ’s parable I look at the handsembracing            clutching               caressing                 the hands I can only seebecause Rembrandt saw them for me  the hands as seenin the light            Nouwen shone on themhis power of suggestion  & insightmaking me wonder how I’d viewthem on my own The younger son in meabsorbs their reassuring firmness the elder                only considers my place & the father I am                though a faintimitation               is dancing
April 29, 2019
Reviews

Building a Home for Learning

In my work with preservice teachers and in conversations with colleagues at Hope College, I frequently engage in questions of what it means to integrate faith and learning. Is it a matter of teaching Christian perspectives and ideas in a particular discipline? Is it about the worldview presuppositions that frame disciplinary assumptions and issues? Might it be about the ethos or ethic of ourselves as teachers? Does it boil down to the moments when we share our faith with students…
April 26, 2019
Reviews

Art as Concrete Theology

For anyone familiar with the interdisciplinary conversation in theology and the arts, Jeremy Begbie’s name is well known. Begbie has been arguing for music – and arts more broadly – as sites for serious theological engagement for some time (his first major monograph, Theology, Music, and Time, is now a landmark) and has pioneered an approach to doing theology that goes far beyond superficial attempts to get “behind the art” with questions of authorial intent. Begbie’s approach is, as he…
April 24, 2019
Essays

A Drink of Water: Flint, Michigan, 2014–2018

I assure you that anyone who gives you a drink of water because you belong to me will certainly receive a reward.Mark 9:41 The facts of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, are well known. Most important, it was caused entirely by human error and prolonged by a subsequent refusal to admit responsibility and take timely action. In April 2014, a state-appointed emergency manager opened a new pipeline to carry water from the Flint River to the city’s inhabitants. The…
April 22, 2019