New Here?
     
Celebrity

Tom, Time, and the Tyranny of Perfection

Tom, Time, and the Tyranny of Perfection

by Nick Lannon on Mar 20, 2018 • 5 Comments

I’m finally ready for Tom Brady again. Are you? We watched as he was doubted at points during the second-to-most-recent NFL season—during which he was thirty-nine years old—only to come back and win the Super Bowl. We watched as he was lauded last season—at forty—only to lose the Super Bowl. We’ve listened to sports talk radio wonder how long he can play, how long he can be good, how long, how long, how long. I needed a break. How long, Oh Lord (Psalm 40), must we listen to stories about Tom Brady?

It’s March, and I guess I’m ready again. The…

Read More > > >

Turns Out Sex Is Still a Big Deal

Turns Out Sex Is Still a Big Deal

by Sarah Condon on Jan 19, 2018 • 9 Comments

Like many people, for the past few days I have wrestled with what to make of the (too) well documented evening that a woman had with actor/comedian/writer Aziz Ansari. If you are living under a rock, a woman called “Grace” (hell of a pseudonym), had what she called the worst night of her life with Ansari. 

Needless to say, “Grace” has received a massive wave of critique. People are demanding to know why she stayed when she was uncomfortable and how she could possibly classify the evening as sexual assault. Perhaps the most upsetting critique is that everyone wants…

Read More > > >

Wearing Black

Wearing Black

by Ann Lowrey Forster on Jan 12, 2018 • 11 Comments

I didn’t actually catch the Golden Globes on Sunday. On Monday morning, though, I watched Oprah’s dazzling speech and heard Natalie Portman’s perfect one-liner. I also saw the streaming in of men and women dressed in midnight and ebony and onyx. Oprah telling us about Recy Taylor and a new horizon gives everyone all the feels; and Natalie makes me want to join the fight, burn my bra, and kidney punch my husband just for possessing a Y chromosome. But, given a few days of reflection, something strikes me as a bit off.

When people decline to come to church because…

Read More > > >

Love the Art, Hate the Artist?

Love the Art, Hate the Artist?

by Guest Contributor on Nov 28, 2017 • 9 Comments

A phenomenal piece from our friend, Abby Farson Pratt, who asks what we do when we’re all monsters. 

We’re feeling pretty good about ourselves these days. We are doing a lot of smirking, a lot of finger-pointing, a lot of handing down of fatwas on Twitter.

When we cut someone off in traffic or lie to protect ourselves, we say, “Well, at least I’m not Harvey Weinstein. Or Louis C.K. Or Kevin Spacey. I’m not that bad.”

We enjoy this; we always have. It’s pleasant to publicly denounce others. Lately, we’ve been having a really good time. It seems like every other…

Read More > > >

What Happened After Mister Rogers Visited Koko the Gorilla

What Happened After Mister Rogers Visited Koko the Gorilla

by David Zahl on Oct 25, 2017 • 3 Comments

A lot going on in this wonderfully upside-down excerpt from the profile of Mr Rogers that Esquire ran in 1998, the sort of thing that if it hadn’t actually happened, no one would believe it. A beautiful reminder that grace and law do not follow a linguistic formula, thank God, ht G&AP:

Once upon a time, there was a boy who didn’t like himself very much. It was not his fault. He was born with cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is something that happens to the brain. It means that you can think but sometimes can’t walk, or even talk….

Read More > > >

Jennifer Lawrence, the Irony of Normalcy, and the Righteousness of Faith

Jennifer Lawrence, the Irony of Normalcy, and the Righteousness of Faith

by Guest Contributor on Oct 18, 2017 • 5 Comments

This piece was written by our friend Brad J. Gray.

She caught our eye in 2007 on a short-lived network comedy. Then, she broke through with an independent drama in 2010 that earned her national acclaim and attention. She flew into the stratosphere and became the mega-star we know and love with a summer blockbuster in 2012, the success of which she’s likely still riding the coattails. If you didn’t already catch it, I’m referring to Jennifer Lawrence. “J-Law,” as she’s lovingly known on the “Interwebz,” made a name for herself on The Bill Engvall Show during its brief run on…

Read More > > >

Tom Petty, Three Chords, and the Church of Free Falling

Tom Petty, Three Chords, and the Church of Free Falling

by Guest Contributor on Oct 4, 2017 • 3 Comments

This piece was written by Andrew Johnson. 

My mom texts me Monday morning to let me know that Tom Petty had been hospitalized after a cardiac arrest. I follow the news off and on the rest of the day, seeing conflicting reports over whether or not he had died. This confusion over Petty’s death, especially following Sunday’s news of 59 people killed in Las Vegas, leaves me feeling particularly helpless and disillusioned with how quickly we as a nation can share bits of information but somehow fail to find shared meaning.

So I leave work a bit early, walk half a mile…

Read More > > >

The Preacher Goes to Fashion Week: Jim Carrey's Gospel Madness

The Preacher Goes to Fashion Week: Jim Carrey’s Gospel Madness

by Adam Morton on Sep 21, 2017 • 21 Comments

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
    vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

God, in his mercy, sends preachers. Some are well-educated and institutionally-approved folk serving the faithful in fine old churches, but in these last days we should take no alarm that the same Lord who spoke through Balaam’s ass might again choose an eccentric instrument. His preachers are not necessarily welcomed even under ordinary circumstances – indeed, the urgency of the need and the warmth of the reception seem often enough to have an inverse relationship. Again, this should not surprise, because the preacher’s first word is a word of law,…

Read More > > >

Football At Last: A Preseason Preview

Football At Last: A Preseason Preview

by Duo Dickinson on Aug 2, 2017 • 8 Comments

NFL preseason games start next week….

The airwaves are crackling hype at the advent of NFL team summer camps. Every year, about a million young men and a hundred or more young women play tackle football at every level. They’re all starting the season about now. 

Fewer than 2,000 of those players are in the National Football League. The NFL is a forced marriage of sports and show biz, but it’s our only national platform for those of us who are hopelessly devoted to a sport that changed our early lives. Having played, coached, and been a part of a son’s…

Read More > > >

When Deep Waters and Parking Lots Become Church

When Deep Waters and Parking Lots Become Church

by Charlotte Getz on Jul 25, 2017 • 4 Comments

In 2007, almost ten years after her death, it came into more public knowledge that Mother Teresa experienced a terrible sense of separation from God throughout the majority of her ministry. Less than three months before receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she wrote in a letter to one of her spiritual confidants, “Jesus has a very special love for you. [But] as for me—The silence and the emptiness is so great—that I look and do not see,—Listen and do not hear.”

Under the arresting weight of my own Dark Night tendencies, it gives me great comfort that although Mother…

Read More > > >

Gaga for Gaga

Gaga for Gaga

by Scott Jones on Feb 6, 2017 • 2 Comments

“The glory of God is man fully alive.” -Irenaeus

I don’t know the last time I was so fixated on a Super Bowl half time show. Actually I can state with complete confidence that I’ve never been so fixated on one. From beginning to end, Lady Gaga’s performance at Super Bowl LI was one for the record books. It was glorious in the best sense of the word.

No doubt Gaga’s performance will inspire a sea of words on the interwebs in the next 24 to 48 hours. I hesitate to add the pile of prose. But something caught my eye that…

Read More > > >

A Halftime Show Not of Human Origin

A Halftime Show Not of Human Origin

by CJ Green on Feb 6, 2017 • 9 Comments

“I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin” (Gal 1:11).

Lady Gaga began her halftime show from a perch high above everyone else: Above the stadium, underneath a drone-filled night sky, she was dressed in what Variety called “an MTV exec’s idea of what Y2K was going to look like” — in other words, a glittery silver spacewoman outfit; her eyes were bedazzled with a silvery mask.

Everyone I spoke to beforehand was eager to see what Gaga would do but anxious about whether or not she would get political. In that sense, it was…

Read More > > >