I recently went to a professional football game in Kansas City. What struck me most about the whole affair was that for the tens of thousands there it so much seemed an act of worship. In fact, pieces of liturgy were scattered just about everywhere. The climax of the pro football seasons begins in Advent, just like the church year itself, and the playoffs come in Epiphany. Even the anticipatory waiting of Advent was there, stuck as we were in…
The Internet: full of promise, full of power. And full of hype. As a Christian pastor and theologian, and, until recently, a technology professional, I am disturbed by the fawning hype I frequently hear about the Internet. Some of that hype may have diminished in the wake of the dot-com bust and September 11th, 2001. But the hype has not disappeared entirely, and its presence is seen everywhere from Wall Street to Main Street to Pennsylvania Avenue. One might expect…
The wind swirling trash on Kirov Street, the main thoroughfare of the district of Perchersk–an extension of Kiev–rose unhindered from the Dnieper, the river masking the smell of war, a mixture of the exhaust fumes of trucks, tanks, mobile artillery pieces, horses, wet uniforms, field kitchens, dead bodies rotting under collapsed masonry, and the smell that shook him with fear: the odor of singed hair and burned bodies. Earlier, when he reported in at the field hospital to receive his…
That I’d written a novel surprised people because I have a Ph.D. in American Culture Studies and for many years taught college courses and wrote nonfiction books about film and media. My day job kept me busy enough. (Maybe that’s why I lost sleep over whether to kill off my erudite professor character.) But I have this story I’ve always wanted to tell, and started carving out time to do some research, make notes, and organize material until I could finally commit to writing. Free at last!
It’s a basic tenet of the Calvinist faith by which I was raised that those sinners who haven’t plumbed the depths of their own darkness simply are not capable of comprehending the blinding luminosity of grace itself. I rather like that equation, but then I live on the Great Plains, where the Lord wrote the textbook on winter. Because out here we know winter, I’m willing to lay down hard cash that we know, therefore, more deeply the joy of…
I’ve submitted to endless rounds of treatment and taken buckets of medications for one thing: Life Moments. By that, I don’t mean the completion of a “bucket list” of meaningful experiences. I mean Life Moments as the intentional investing into something outside of myself that brings joy.
When Papa’s widow, Della Kley, died in 1966, her estate’s inventory resembled a Salvation Army Store–cheap stuffed furniture not worth recovering, kitchen appliances long outdated and chipped remnants of a Sears Roebuck dinnerware set. Della saved Papa’s Bible, a leather-bound Scofield edition, several of his favorite gospel tracts and the remainders of the moderately priced jewelry he’d given her during their courtship near the turn of the last century. Everything suggested the life and times of a poor Protestant widow,…
Recognizing this tendency to limit myself, I prayed, asking God to show me places I’d been holding back. I prayed for the courage I knew I’d need to respond in faith. Teresa says, “Fear distorts knowledge of self…And so I say, my friends, let us set our eyes on Christ…then self-knowledge will not make us timid or cowardly.”
I don’t have a career. Most of my jobs have included me having to run the checkout, and sweeping and mopping the floor at the end of the night. My husband doesn’t have a college education or a career. He’s what is referred to as a cement dweller. He goes to a factory and spends his days standing on a cement floor bending and twisting metal all day. We don’t own a large house—up until a year earlier, we were living in a basement.
