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Eden’s Other Tree

There's really nothing else like it, at least in a very long time, if ever. The audaciousness, even presumption, is already there quite plainly in the title. After all, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life leaps and stretches, always gorgeously, to show and tell (with too much telling, according to some) the ungraspable, quite illogical prospect that this ever-so-mangled world was formed and persists in Love, no matter how dire or pervasive its woundedness. Think Hopkins the Jesuit: "The world…
Roy M. Anker
November 1, 2011
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Killer

I kill people all the time. I try not to. I've been working on it. But then another news story airs about another slimy politician and I find myself yelling at the TV, belittling the person, creating fresh insults, and cheering when my favorite late-night comedians stick it to 'em good. There's blood on my hands. Oh, you may say, we all do that. We all debase from a distance. We all deride from the La-Z-Boy. The football coach who…
Mary S. Hulst
November 1, 2011
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The Divine Regard

Psalm 121 is the sort of psalm we might post on our refrigerators and bulletin boards, right alongside "I know the plans I have for you" and "All things work together for good for those who love the Lord." A personal affirmation of faith, a soaring word of assurance about our great and good God: "Nothing will harm you. God is the maker of heaven and earth, and all is well. You'll be safe." On good days, we rejoice in…
November 1, 2011
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Prophylactic Poetry

This morning I straightened the shoes in the front hall and said to the dog, the most attentive member of the family, "I'd do it all again–/marry the man, carry the sons. I'd eat/ the whole McIntosh, seeds and all."* She sighed and sank to the f loor, waiting for the rest of the poem or perhaps completing it herself in dog-speak. Surely she could. She's heard it and half a dozen others often enough as I struggled to memorize…
Christine MacLean
October 1, 2011
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Popcorn + Prophets

EYES THAT SEE They gather downtown each week in the small living room of an upstairs apartment. It started out as one friend opening her home to a few others for a meal and the opportunity to engage a text through conversation. Word spread quickly to others that something significant was happening among those who were gathering. The small group of seven soon turned into a gathering of more than thirty. Couches meant for three or four people now hold…
Eric Kuiper
October 1, 2011
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Rain and Drought

My wife, Karin, handed our young son to a nurse who would take him to an operating room for open-heart surgery. As I watched, I felt kinship with Abraham taking Isaac up Mount Moriah, with hope that they would return down the mountain together. We took Tyler up Mount Moriah to open-heart surgery three times—at six days, four months, and eighteen months—and all three times we returned home with him. Tyler was diagnosed in utero with a heart defect that…
Jeffrey L. Sajdak
October 1, 2011
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Duelling Bonhoeffers

If you want to know more about the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor, theologian, and Nazi resister, you are in luck. Your choices range from Eberhard Bethge's classic biography, newly revised by Victoria Barnett and weighing in at 1,048 pages (Fortress, 2000), to half a dozen biographies of two hundred pages or less, in addition to three documentaries, three plays, two "biographical novels," an opera, and a feature film (Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace, 1999). As Stephen R. Haynes…
David Timmer
October 1, 2011
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After Hurricane Irene: A Lesson of Two Seas

The Galilean Sea. The Adriatic Sea. Violent storms on both. Mark's Gospel tells the story of Jesus and his disciples crossing the Sea of Galilee (Mark 4:35–41). A tired Jesus is fast asleep on a cushion in the stern of the boat when a sudden storm erupts. The book of Acts tells of Paul on the Adriatic Sea, as he travels from Jerusalem to Rome. After the crew and passengers have endured some fourteen days of howling winds and high…
Carol Westphal
October 1, 2011
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Body Language

I love the way the kingbird feeds by acrobatics from the trees along the lake. She lunges from her branch above the water to snatch what I can't see, or plunges down and curls around the bug she catches. I love the way that Levi takes communion at the rail. I kneel as he stands next to me, stocky, ruddy, ancient, undistracted, with his hands cupped out and his eyes half closed. When I'm at the cottage by myself, I…
Daniel Meeter
October 1, 2011