Dispatches from Gabbatha
“In fact, while the climate of widespread moral uncertainty can in some way be explained by the multiplicity and gravity of today's social problems, and these can sometimes mitigate the subjective responsibility of individuals, it is no less true that we are confronted by an even larger reality, which can be described as a veritable… Continue reading Towards a Thanatocene Spirituality
I have always said that Los Angeles wasn't the city for me—that doing life in L.A. would be a catastrophic mistake. To live the remainder of my life in L.A. would mean (in the words of Racine's Le songe d'Athalie), C'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit. "It was during the horror of a profound night," or so I… Continue reading What’s going on?
Originally published in two installments in 2016. This is an edited and collected version including a final chapter written in mid-2017. Chapter One (June 2016) In the first volume of Marcel Proust’s, In Search of Lost Time, one of the characters introduced is the up-and-coming socialite, M. Swann. He often visited the Proust’s country home in… Continue reading Healing and the Promise: Chapters I-III
Originally published in three installments in late 2015 and early 2016. This is an edited and collected version. Chapter One The way of the Son of God into the far country is the way of obedience. This is…the first and inner moment of the mystery of the deity of Christ. – Karl Barth In October… Continue reading Suffering and the Promise: Chapters I-III
Tim Keller, internationally renowned pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, includes this piercing thought in his book Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, “If God’s purpose for your job is that you serve the human community, then the way to serve God best is to do the job as… Continue reading Love the Gift-Giver, Not the Gifts
C.S. Lewis narrates the psychology of self-deception in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He presents an ambiguous anthropology that is distinctly non-Augustinian, where deviance and wickedness are divorced from inherent evil: “You mustn’t think that even now Edmund was quite so bad that he actually wanted his brother and sisters to be turned into… Continue reading The Eschatology of Turkish Delight
In a helpful companion, The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Robert Frost, its editor Harold Bloom describes William Morris (1834–1896) as a “gifted lyrical and narrative poet.” It’s an uncontroversial description but perhaps a tad laconic, as is the rest of his two paragraph summary of Morris’ poetic reputation. Nevertheless, Bloom’s selection… Continue reading Edenic Memory in Morris: Allegory in “A Garden by the Sea”
