Posts tagged "Doubt"
Mockingbird at the Movies: Reflections on Life of Pi
Books / Film / Psychology / Religion

Mockingbird at the Movies: Reflections on Life of Pi

by WB on Mar 6, 2013 • 4 Comments

“When every link is a separation, when we understand our communicating with God to be scratches on a wall, the complexity of life does not have to be evaded; we do not cease to wonder and wander, but merely are assured our wondering and wandering are not futile.”

-Matthew Sitman, on Christian Wiman

The Life of Pi struck me at first as a shallow film, with a couple of aphorisms about religion (a house with “room for doubt on every floor”), a movie that excelled in some areas – with four well-deserved Oscars – but something without as much depth as it tries…

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Another Week Ends: Miracle Baskets, Doubtful Essays, Optimism vs Quitting, Paternalism, Secret Menus, Netflix Puppetry, Bowie and Mats Return, and Hathaway Haters
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Another Week Ends: Miracle Baskets, Doubtful Essays, Optimism vs Quitting, Paternalism, Secret Menus, Netflix Puppetry, Bowie and Mats Return, and Hathaway Haters

by David Zahl on Mar 1, 2013 • No Comments

1. In need of a little (heart)warming on a cold winter’s day? Look no further than the spontaneous act of mercy that occurred on a high school basketball court in Texas last month, ht JD:

2. Phillip Lopate ponders the declining place of Doubt in an essay for The NY Times, evidence perhaps of deeper denials, ht SY:

Despite periodic warnings of the essay’s demise, the stuff does continue to be published; if anything, the essay has experienced a slight resurgence of late. I wonder if that may be because it is attuned to the current mood, speaks to the present moment.…

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C.S. Lewis on Crucified Prayer
Prayer / Suffering / Theology

C.S. Lewis on Crucified Prayer

by Ethan Richardson on Aug 21, 2012 • No Comments

A lot of times, in moments of the experience of anxiety, prayer feels as far from us as the faith which feels so temporally impotent. Lewis deals with this in the context of Christ’s Gethsemane prayer, in his short piece on prayer, Letters to Malcolm.

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith. I don’t agree at all. They are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the Passion of Christ. For the beginning of the Passion–the first move, so to speak–is in…

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The Christ of Silence, Part One: Prayer and the Folded Arms of God
Literature / Suffering / Theology

The Christ of Silence, Part One: Prayer and the Folded Arms of God

by Ethan Richardson on Mar 21, 2012 • 1 Comment

Here launches a three-part, week-long miniseries on Shusaku Endo’s eminent novel, Silence, about a Portuguese missionary in religiously repressed, 17th century Japan. The priest, Sebastian Rodrigues, in a paradoxically doubt-rife and no-less-gracious way finds his wayward trail to his own Calvary and, accordingly, into the very heart of God.

The sea only stretches out endlessly, melancholy and dark, while below the grey clouds there is not the shadow of an island. There is no change.

What does it mean when we pray to no avail? When we call on God and there is no change? What is this cruel silence? How can…

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