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Essays

Distance

1,284.5 miles: The distance from my front door to Charlottesville, Virginia. In the second weekend of August, I woke to the sound of a crop-duster plane zooming over our family’s tent in the middle of a Minnesota state park about a half-hour from my home. We were on our annual family end-of-summer camping trip. I lay there for a minute on the air mattress and reached over to my shoe, where I’d stuck my phone for the night. I drowsily…
April 30, 2018
Essays

Reformers and Race: Reconciling Dialect and Deed

“Sawubona.” This Zulu word for hello is much more than a simple greeting. Translated, its intention means “I see you, and by seeing you, I bring you into being.” Understood this way, this word has the potential to reshape the way we see ourselves and others, particularly influencing our social constructions of race and nationalism. Seeing one another appropriately requires the affirmation that all humanity is created in the image of God and thus possesses inherent dignity, value and worth…
April 30, 2018
Reviews

Exploring Calvinism’s Appeal

Saving Calvinism: Expanding the Reformed Tradition SAVING CALVINISM: EXPANDING THE REFORMED TRADITION OLIVER D. CRISP IVP ACADEMIC, 2016 $18 (PAPERBACK) 165 PAGES My initial response to the title of this book was, “Does Calvinism need saving?” Oliver Crisp, professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, thinks it does. His solution is to provide alternatives to what he considers unduly narrow or dogmatic positions taken in traditional Calvinism – for example, double predestination, total depravity and the bondage of the…
April 30, 2018
Inside Out

A Long-Lasting Pain: Reflections after Charlottesville

A holy privilege of the pastorate is that people trust us with their pain. For them, we are safe. Sometimes we are the only safe people with whom hurting people can bear to reveal the depth of the sadness and trauma they silently bear. When person shares his or her pain with me, I am the shepherd offering comfort and help as I am able, quietly bearing witness to that pain before God in prayer. When a community expresses their…
April 30, 2018
Poetry

Hosea, Single

Hosea 2:15 In January your keys keep the time, plink like antlers discarded in the foyer. House sealed tight as a covenant. I hold our truth with baby-fisted certainty, days stacked neatly as closed books on a calendar. Hours like the travel of the front porch rocker. In March, the month for war, you leave me. Reverse-alchemy. Gold, like youth, returned to dross. I start to date, trace the river after a hard rain mud-soak wash churning towards some lighted…
April 30, 2018
Poetry

Let Those Who Have Eyes See

On July 6, 2016, Officer Jeronimo Yanez killed motorist Philando Castile while Castile was belted in the seat of his car, accompanied by his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds and her 4-year-old daughter. On June 16, 2017, Yanez was found not guilty on one count of second-degree manslaughter and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm. The 12-person jury was asked to decide if the prosecution had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Yanez had been culpably negligent. In a rare…
April 30, 2018
The Tech-Wise Family
Reviews

Making Technology a Servant

The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in its Proper Place THE TECH-WISE FAMILY: EVERYDAY STEPS FOR PUTTING TECHNOLOGY IN ITS PROPER PLACE| ANDY CROUCH BAKER BOOKS, 2017 $13.99 224 PAGES Has your family tried the Dolmio Pepper Hacker? With a twist of the pepper mill, your home TVs, wi-fi and mobile devices shut down and family members engage with each other instead of their devices. Yes, it’s too good to be true, but the YouTube video creators behind…
April 30, 2018
Essays

Canada Geese and Gerasene Swine

I saw them across the water in the early morning, on our lake in Ontario, just beyond Paquin’s Point: a band of geese, maybe half a dozen. What I actually saw, just barely in the low-angled light, was a passing vision of long thin necks and heads upon the water, gliding behind the point and out of sight. I ran up to the cottage to get the binoculars, but I had to wait an hour to get a better view…
Daniel Meeter
February 28, 2018
Poetry

Almost Overhead

There was a caution in the air. A thin front of yellow yielded to heavy black layers of a disruptive sky crawling menacingly above. Thunder sounded from the hands of trauma, releasing repeated detonations. The calm surface air quickly became an unlikely opportunity for safety. Nature began to carve out its design of strength in impressive waves Roger Singer is a chiropractor practicing in upstate New York. Image: Marc Wieland on Unsplash
February 28, 2018