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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
Reviews

Our Burning Streets

Race & Place RACE & PLACE: HOW URBAN GEOGRAPHY SHAPES THE JOURNEY TO RECONCILIATION DAVID P. LEONG INTERVARSITY PRESS, 2017 $16 (PAPERBACK) 208 PAGES The day I finished reading this book was the day 15-year-old unarmed Jordan Edwards was shot and killed by a policeman’s rifle. This death, like the long string of deaths of young black men (and women) that came before Edwards’, the current U.S. presidential administration’s executive orders regarding immi-gration as well as other policies focused on race and…
February 28, 2018
Essays

Theology in Bronze

T.S. Elliot wrote that at the end of all our journeying we will arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. For me, it took moving to Calvin College, in the heart of Dutch Calvinist West Michigan, to see the richness of the Lutheran landscape where I spent the formative years of my academic career. For 15 years, I trudged uphill to the bluff-top campus of Gustavus Adolphus College, my sights fixed on the soaring 187-foot…
February 28, 2018
Poetry

Silver moon

You have my heart which is similar to the moon’s grip on this night Dark branches reach high to embrace the sky waters bulge       in the curve of an eye   She slips from behind clouds      & then slides out of sight    The chapel on the corner stands secure     stained glass glowing in moonlight   An unseen violin plays in the dark I want to love you       like its strings love to sing    like Christ loves the church      like those…
February 28, 2018
Inside Out

Peter Marshall: Keeping the Dream

Peter Marshall Even though his path to the ministry was not an easy one, Peter Marshall, a young Scottish immigrant said, “I have determined to give my life to God for Him to use me wherever he wants me,” writes Catherine Marshall in her book A Man Called Peter. Despite his early life of adversity, he was sustained by his mother’s faith and her promise “Dinna worry, son, the Lord will provide. He’ll open up the way,” Marshall himself recalled…
February 28, 2018
As We See It

Shakespeare’s Language Lessons

“He was not of an age, but for all time!” – Ben Jonson Shakespeare indeed was a man of his age. Ask anyone sitting down to read his plays for the first time – with their 16th- and 17th-century language, idioms and references. Nevertheless, Ben Jonson’s message about his friend is obviously true: Shakespeare’s works have spoken to countless eras and cultures in the 400 years since his death, and they continue to do so as we return to his…
February 28, 2018
Essays

Olivier Messiaen: Music as Prayer

VISIONS OF AMEN: THE EARLY LIFE AND MUSIC OF OLIVIER MESSIAEN STEPHEN SCHLOESSER EERDMANS, 2014 $50 570 PAGES CONCURRENTLY RELEASED AUDIO RECORDING: MESSIAEN, VISIONS OF AMEN HYESOOK KIM AND STEPHANE LEMELIN, PIANO WWW.EERDMANS.COM/SCHLOESSER_AUDIO Few composers of the 20th century were as deeply shaped by a theological tradition as was Olivier Messiaen by French Catholicism in the period following the First World War. Born to a literary family – his mother a poet, his father an English teacher and translator of Shakespeare…
David A. Hoekema
February 28, 2018
Essays

Capital versus the World: the Protestant Principle in the 21st Century

In April 2014, Thomas Piketty’s tome on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, was released in English translation, featuring 577 pages (minus the footnotes) and some 115 or so graphs and illustrations. In May Capital reached the no. 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list, a fact surprising even to the publisher Harvard, which struggled to meet the furious demand for the book. The central assertion of this behemoth of a text is that capitalism, particularly since the…
February 28, 2018