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Essays

The Sacramental Imagination: How Can We Foster and Grow It?

"A sacrament is when something holy happens. It is transparent time, time which you can see through to something deep inside time. Generally speaking, Protestants have two official sacraments (the Lord’s Supper, Baptism) and Roman Catholics have these two plus five others (Confirmation, Penance, Extreme Unction, Ordination, and Matrimony). In other words, at such milestone moments as seeing a baby baptized or being baptized yourself, confessing your sins, getting married, dying, you are apt to catch a glimpse of the…
January 1, 2019
CultureEssays

My Summer Vacation: a Report

Late in a recent summer, I spent an entire day with my departmental compatriots working on Student Learning Outcomes. This is merely the latest manifestation of the assessment mania now gripping our college – and higher education as a whole. Naturally I came home with a crushing headache. Meanwhile, many of us had seen each other only in passing for the previous few months, so we engaged in some pleasant chit-chat and catching up with one another: “How was your…
October 31, 2018
CultureReviews

Learning to See Life’s Ecstatic Dance

The Overstory, by Richard Powers THE OVERSTORY RICHARD POWERS W. W. NORTON & COMPANY. INC., 2018 $27.95 512 PAGES Richard Powers, a National Book Award winner, has been writing science- and tech-related fiction for more than 30 years. In his latest novel, The Overstory, he displays his mastery of the craft with an innovative interplay of theme, structure and style. The first 150 pages trace nine characters – nine “roots” according to the section heading – each equally compelling. The…
October 31, 2018
CultureEssays

I’m Sick of Appreciating Teachers

Don’t get me wrong, teachers are my heroes. This week, my son’s kindergarten teacher discovered that he had been unknowingly playing with another child’s vomit on the playground – somehow thinking it was “slushy snow” leftover after the spring melt – and she calmly sent him straight to the bathroom to wash his hands. She’s a saint. What if appreciating teachers went beyond a Hallmark card and a latte? If you think teaching is easy, you have never spoken to…
October 31, 2018
Poetry

Shadow Line

Night shadows are the feast of awakenings. The outskirts of compassion, absent of spiritual thresholds. They are the counterparts without conversation; the willing partner in an imperfect sphere. They are unassuming. Their intension is directed, visually controlled, a bondage of motion; their gifts are weightless, failing to intrude. Style is choreographed without independence or expression. Roger Singer is a chiropractor practicing in upstate New York. Photo by anastasia on Unsplash
October 31, 2018
As We See ItChurch

I Never Was an Evangelical, and I Never Want to Be

Those of us in this little Reformed tribe: Do we, or do we not count ourselves as Evangelicals? Since the rise of the current American Disgrace-in-Chief, flung into power on a trebuchet constructed by white Evangelical voters, the Reformed/Evangelical dilemma has become the subject of some urgent consideration. On  the Reformed Journal's blog, The Twelve, Kristin du Mez wrote  back in April 2015 about Rachel Held Evans’ defection from Evangelicalism, and du Mez described her own youthful forays into Evangelical culture,…
October 31, 2018
Poetry

Searching

Disturbed waters are the evidence of youths seeking a smooth belonging; searching to square off the circle. They are dreamers between rocks, pushing from a hard place, attempting to re-create the beginning without pain, escaping the fires between the lines. Fingers bait the eyes into corners. Second chances come at a cost. Seek to endure without the loss of soul. Roger Singer is a chiropractor practicing in upstate New York. Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
October 31, 2018
CultureReviews

Treating a Literary Icon with Dignity

A Light So Lovely A LIGHT SO LOVELY: THE SPIRITUAL LEGACY OF MADELEINE L’ENGLE SARAH ARTHUR ZONDERVAN, 2018 $13.38, PAPERBACK 224 PAGES If she were alive, Madeleine L’Engle would turn 100 at the end of November. Her centenary, along with the release of a version of A Wrinkle in Time brought to us by Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling earlier this year, has brought this formidable and prolific author back into the spotlight. Sarah Arthur, a prolific writer…
October 31, 2018
EssaysPolitics

The Hollander Files

Clannish, insular immigrants who refuse to assimilate ... large families and achieving kids who quickly overshadow other residents ... loyalty given to foreign, even adversarial, governments ... houses of worship where foreign languages are spoken ... dominating clergy who browbeat their people ... houses of worship set afire by arsonists. It is time for us to awaken to the reality that our American institutions are in danger from these foreigners who persist in bringing their un-American ideas with them, and…
October 31, 2018