November 28, 2006

Before the solstice in December when
trees stand stripped on granite ground,
I hear them in the woods at dusk,
their hollow hooting back and forth,
the courtship of the Great Horned Owls,
in this, the darkest time of year, light
draining from an empty sky, but still
they sing, response and call, their slow
duet, notes rise and fall, and something
deep within me stirs, a new beginning,
even now.

In Dinka Bor tradition, long ebony shafts serve as walking sticks for the elderly, as scepters for newly married women and as weapons for initiates into manhood. Wooden spears are vital to Dinka cattle herders moving through alien territory. Hardwood branches, carved by Christian evangelists into crosses, are still implements of worship. The old poles of jak (animist spirits), which used to mark stationary shrines, are now carried in migration and shaken in church processions.

Christians from all traditions and from across the political spectrum have been pressing President Bush to try to get more United Nations peacekeeping troops on the ground in Darfur to stop the unrelenting violence there. The National Council of Churches endorsed the UN resolution in August that called for sending UN troops. In October, Evangelicals for Darfur, a coalition of Christian leaders—including Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and Jim Wallis of Sojourners—took out full-page ads in newspapers calling for President Bush to do more to address the crisis.

George Lindbeck is one of the most influential Protestant theologians of recent decades. He taught at Yale from 1955 until his retirement in 1993. He was a Lutheran “delegated observer” at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), and since that time his work has been a crucial part of ecumenical discussions, especially those between Lutherans and Roman Catholics.