From Cormac McCarthy’s spare tour de faith, in dramatic form, between Black and White. Black has “saved” White from an attempted suicide–a head-on leap into an oncoming train, the Black-nomered “Sunset Limited“–a “saving” White didn’t want, a “saving” he still doesn’t want. Black, though, is a man of hope, an ex-con and ex-addict, and sees his life in light of the providence of God. White, on the other hand, sees randomness and discord–Sound and Fury, if you will. Black and White are confronting the love of God and the depths to which it descends–does God love those who do not…
Mary Karr on Tin Cups, Mirrors and Prayer’s Relief
Two phenomenal quotations from the phenomenal Mary Karr. The first one comes from the unbelievably great essay “Facing Altars” which is included in her poetry collection, Sinners Welcome, ht PW:
People usually (always?) come to church as they do to prayer and poetry—through suffering and terror. Need and fear…
The faithless contenders for prayer’s relief who sometimes ask me for help praying (still a comic notion) often say it seems hypocritical to turn to God only now during whatever crisis is forcing them toward it – a kid with leukemia, say, husband lost in the World Trade Center. But no one I…
Life as Unpredictable as the Knuckleball
This is a review of once-beloved, then-beleaguered, now-famous knuckleballer R.A. Dickey. It comes from Mockingbird friend and baseball fan Brooks Tate.
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land.
- Song of Solomon 2:12
Take heart baseball fans, spring is here, and opening day has arrived. This spring also includes the release of Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest For Truth, Authenticity And The Perfect Knuckleball, the not-so-pretty life narrative of R.A. Dickey. His story is not rags-to-riches nor is it the culmination of hard work. This first person account is…
Forgiveness Has Risen: The Easter Sermon of St. John Chrysostom
If any be pious and a lover of God,
let him rejoice in this fair and radiant festival.
If any be a faithful servant
let him enter into the joy of his Lord.
If any be weary with fasting,
let him now enjoy his payment.
If anyone has labored from the first hour,
let him receive today his just reward.
If anyone has come after the third hour,
let him now be thankful that the feast is at hand,
If anyone has waited until after the sixth hour, let him not be anxious, no loss shall be his own.
If anyone has tarried until the ninth hour, let him draw near also, shedding…
Hast Thou Considered My Servant Job? Thornton Wilder on Good Friday
One of my favorite Thornton Wilder playlets, and if I may say, a great little three-minute read for Good Friday:
Now it came to pass on the day when the sons of God came to present themselves before SATAN that CHRIST also came among them. And
SATAN. [Said unto CHRIST:] Whence comest Thou?
CHRIST. [Answered SATAN and said:] From going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it.
[And:]
SATAN. [Said unto CHRIST:] Hast though considered my servant Judas? For there is none like him in the earth, an evil and a faithless man, one that feareth me and turneth away…
The Christ of Silence, Part Three: Gospel Swampland and the Roots that Cannot Be Cut
Here concludes our mini-series on Shusaku Endo’s Silence. For Part One and Part Two, click here and here.
“I’ve told you. This country of Japan is not suited to the teaching of Christianity. Christianity simply cannot put down roots here…Father, you were not defeated by me…You were defeated by this swamp of Japan.”
These are the magistrate Inoue’s words to Father Rodrigues after his apostasy–kind words with the most tragically violent edges. In these words, Inoue has taken the Gospel to be a gospel, the Word a word sown and silent in this swamp of Japan. With a consolation, Inoue has denounced…
Testimony – Stephen Dunn
The Lord woke me in the middle of the night,
and there stood Jesus with a huge tray,
and the tray was heaped with cookies,
and He said, Stephen, have a cookie,
and that’s when I knew for sure the Lord
is the real deal, the Man of all men,
because at that very moment
I was thinking of cookies, Vanilla Wafers
to be exact, and there were two
Vanilla Wafers in among the chocolate
chips and the lemon ices, and one
had a big S on it, and I knew it was for me,
and Jesus took it off the tray and put it
in my mouth, as if He were give me
communication, or whatever they call it.
Then He said, Have another,
and I tell you I thought a long time before I
refused, because I knew it was a test
to see if I was a Christian, which means
a man like Christ, and not a big ole hog.
What “Faith Alone” Really Means: A Word from Steven Paulson’s Lutheran Theology
From Steven Paulson’s tremendous overview of the roots of the Lutheran faith, Lutheran Theology, in which he talks about the radicality of Luther’s understanding of “faith alone,” and its perpetual endangerment before the human yearning to earn.
The key problem with mixing up grace and some capacity of the soul…is that we fail to understand how the Gospel justifies by faith alone…Possession (of righteousness) nullified utterly by law in death, and does not return when we are made alive again. Instead, what faith grasps is a promise, but a promise is not legal property; it is a word that engenders hope…
Marilynne Robinson on the Anthropology of Religion and the Intervention of Grace
Man, I wish I could write like Marilynne Robinson. Such precision and clarity, so much soul and insight. She takes on subjects that can be so dull, and breathes such life into them. The following quotations come from the first essay in her much-recommended new collection, When I Was a Child I Read Books, entitled “Freedom of Thought.”
Religious experience is said to be associated with activity in a particular part of the brain. For some reason this is supposed to imply that it is delusional. But all thought and experience can be located in some part of the brain, that…
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Another Week Ends: Jeremy Lin, Scientism, Cosmism, Clergy Burnout, Tearjerkers, Springsteen’s Advice, 30 Rock, and Garbage Pail Kids
1. The Linsanity continues! But this time the hubbub has to do with a powerful (and unexpected) instance of off-court forgiveness. Last week, Jeremy Lin invited the ESPN employee who was fired for writing an offensive headline about Lin to lunch. Newsday spoke with the journalist in question, Anthony Federico:
Federico apologized after he was fired, calling the headline’s play on words ["chink in the armor"] “an honest mistake.” Lin said at the time that he accepted the apology and added, “You have to learn to forgive.” Apparently, he meant it. A member of Lin’s family reached out to Federico via…
Forde Friday: Spiritual Progress = “Shut Up And Listen”!
Here’s another zinger about our misguided ideas of spiritual progress from our favorite late Lutheran Theologian, Gerhard Forde. For those that tend to get sucked into fruitless spiritual introspection (ahem, that would be me), let this be salve to your soul. This quote is from page 50 of Justification: A Matter of Death and Life.
We see that the law simply cannot bring into being what it commands… The law says, ‘Thou shalt love!’ It is right; it is ‘holy, true, good’. Yet it can’t bring about what it demands. It might impel toward the works of the law, the motions…
Shakespeare Thursday: Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage to true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring barque,
Whose worth’s unknown although his height be taken.
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
How Do I Love Jonathan Haidt? Let Me Count the Ways…
1. The main premise of his new book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, is that the human mind is wired for “righteousness.” Need I say more?! He talks at length about “inner lawyers” and our primal drive to justify ourselves (and all the trouble it creates), which jives not only with experience but with the biblical account(s). In this light, Justification by Faith is (much) more than a quaint 16th century phrase; it speaks to the absolute core of human existence. At least as Jonathan Haidt describes it.
2. Haidt subordinates reason to emotion,…
The Christ of Silence, Part Two: Kichijiro (Or The Judas Everyman)
As we continue our look into Shusaku Endo’s 1969 classic novel, Silence, we take a look into the novel’s foil-turned-everyman, Kichijiro, and the disaster that had to take place to get him there. To read Part One, click here.
At this Kichijiro groveled like a whipped dog and struck his forehead with his hand in token of repentance. This fellow is by nature utterly cowardly and seems quite unable to have the slightest courage. He has good will, however; and I told him in no uncertain terms that if he wanted to overcome his weakness of will and this cowardice that…
Willy Loman and the Tragic Gospel of Achievement
It’s embarrassing. I’ve never seen nor read Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. I know it’s supposed to be one of the great American pieces of literature, but in high school they assigned The Crucible instead, and let’s just say I wasn’t in a huge rush to seek out more afterwards. But John Lahr’s review of Mike Nichols’ new staging of the play (with Philip Seymour Hoffman in the role of Willy Loman) in The New Yorker has changed all that. Lahr waxes very eloquently on what he calls “the gospel of achievement” that is embodied in the character of Willy…
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