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Revaluing the Funeral

THE GOOD FUNERAL: DEATH, GRIEF, AND THE COMMUNITY OF CARE THOMAS G. LONG AND THOMAS LYNCH WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS, 2013 252 pp. $25.00 In the discipline of pastoral care and counseling, I believe there are three courses that students training for pastoral ministry should take. Of those three, one would be Death and Dying and the text, The Good Funeral: Death, Grief, and the Community of Care, coauthored by Thomas Long a pastoral theologian/ Presbyterian minister, and Thomas Lynch,…
Raynard Smith
October 30, 2014
Essays

Coffee Cups and Lactaid Lattes

It was a summer of lattes. Every morning I woke at the crack of dawn, donned black pants and a green apron and drove in the semidarkness to a day full of coffee, sweet syrup, steamed milk and customers. These were good mornings, really. I liked the eerie quiet of my house at 5 a.m., the empty stillness of my neighborhood, the relative calm with a few semitrucks accompanying me on the six-lane highway. I liked walking into the travel…
Anna Visser
October 30, 2014
As We See It

Amazon, Octocopters and Advent

I was born and bred to loathe waiting. My father, with his background in the FBI and law enforcement, is an efficient and effective man – and always on time. All the time. On Sundays in my house as a child, Dad would preside in the foyer of our house, raise his arm, and jingle the car keys loudly. We all knew what the signal meant: In four minutes, he would go and sit in the car. One more minute…
Jared Ayers
October 30, 2014
Fiction

Bobby and Bobbi

I pull out my fifth-grade class picture and my eyes land on a chunky kid who looks like the Big Boy hamburger mascot – without the rosy smile and checkered overalls. Bobby Graham already has the chubby cheeks and wavy black hair. He’s got a pair of Clark Kent glasses on, too, and in the picture he wears the universal expression of the self-conscious. The corners of his mouth are almost turned up, but the rest of his face shows…
Jeff Munroe
October 30, 2014
Essays

Evangelism and Sacraments: Telling Well the Story

The Story cannot be told without reference to water: The waters of creation, the flood, the Red Sea, water from the rock, Jesus in the Jordan, the pool of Bethsaida, a basin for washing feet, bloody water from Jesus’ side, “the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne.” No, the story cannot be told without water, and all that water issues forth from a life-giving font, the baptismal font. Neither…
Sue A. Rozeboom
October 30, 2014
Poetry

What Is Man that Thou Art Mindful of Him

What do we mean when we say children are God’s artistry as preachers are wont to do during baptisms, deleting from their homilies words like “daughter” and “girl” as they exhort their faithful not to deface her beauty? Her cries, while precious, necessary, compelling her mother from tranquil acceptance to energized aid in the nursery, are hardly melodic like deft little fingers dropped by a pianist on his Steinway, the right hand aware of what the left, separate, is doing,…
Nathaniel A. Schmidt
October 30, 2014
Reviews

Child’s Play

PLAYING BEFORE THE LORD: THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOSEPH HAYDN CALVIN R. STAPERT EERDMANS, 2014 304 pp. $24 In the conventional wisdom about the Classical Era in Western art music, these three abide: Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. And the greatest of these is Beethoven. As practices of music history and music consumption have changed, however, this narrative has been challenged. Music lovers of all levels have questioned its assumptions and values, making for a richer and more complex story.…
Suzanne Bratt
October 28, 2014
Essays

Like the Wideness of the Sea?

I remember the first time that I watched the synod of my (Christian Reformed) church in action. Synod met back then (late 1940s) in the reading room of the old Calvin College library and, since there was no separate gallery for visitors, some of us got to nestle close enough to the delegates to make us feel as if we were right there in the dugout with the real players. The delegates, as they looked to me, were, most of…
Lewis B. Smedes
October 1, 2014
As We See It

Revisiting a Landmark Statement on Homosexuality

The May 1999 issue of Perspectives contained an essay by Lewis Smedes, “Like the Wideness of the Sea?” that was among the most significant articles ever to appear in Perspectives. Like most of Smedes’s work, it is richly pastoral, drawing heavily on his experience in the church. He recalled the impassioned debates about divorce and remarriage in the Christian Reformed Church of the 1950s and then wondered about possible parallels to discussions about covenanted, monogamous same-sex relationships. Smedes met with…
Perspectives Journal
October 1, 2014