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The true and the gray: Ambiguity in the human condition
Like most artists, the sculptor and painter Anselm Kiefer favors certain hues and materials. His chosen hue is gray, in all its shades, and gray is nothing if not shaded....
Century Marks
“We can’t completely separate politics and faith. They rise from the same wellspring: the concern about the distance between what is and what ought to be.”—Tim Kaine, a Catholic and a Democrat, who was elected governor of Virginia in November (Newsweek, November 21).
Open paths: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Luke 1:26-38, 47-55
My favorite Christmas book is The Donkey’s Dream, which is about the journey Mary and Joseph made to Bethlehem. Meant for young children, Barbara Helen Berger’s story is a brilliant and subtle work of theology. Or perhaps antitheology, as it allows simple images to tell us more than words can convey about what the incarnation signifies.
Zealous hopes
We have many defenses against hearing the Christmas readings and taking them to heart.
Zealous hopes: Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20
We have many defenses against hearing the Christmas readings and taking them to heart.
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Davis addresses “the gravest scandal” in the church—“the shallow reading of scripture.” Conservatives and liberals alike fail to be ge...
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“Our children are the first generation to be raised without meaningful contact with the natural world,” writ...
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People who liked Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air should like this book, which is part memoir, part adventure t...
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This is a satisfying sampler of Robert Siegel’s work: scenes from farm life; stories from scripture; a series of poems about fishing; poems about bats,...
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Chanticleer brings its usual polish, balance and tonal beauty to these intimate sacred songs....
Occupational hazards
In the spring of 2003, Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid noted that, for Iraqis, the Arabic word for occupation is ihtilal. The word is "shadowed by humiliation, notions of resistance, and still resonant memories of the occupation by the British 85 years before.” Yet that same year the U.S. secured sweeping formal authority from the UN Security Council to serve as the principal “occupying” power in Iraq. John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the UN, declared that “the council has taken decisive action to help the Iraqi people.” This was not the way many Iraqis greeted the news.
Faith claims
Since U.S. immigration laws were liberalized beginning in 1965, America’s religious landscape has undergone dramatic change....
Boy soldiers
If Vietnam, with its baffling, Venus-flytrap landscape, is the perfect dramatic background for an existential drama, the Gulf War would appear to be an ideal setting for an existential comedy: so m...
Go Sox, go Cubs: Not either-or but both-and
This is not an easy time to be a Chicago Cubs fan. Chicago is still celebrating the stunning World Series sweep by the Chicago White Sox....
Take a memo: Prophetic violations
The Internal Revenue Service says that a sermon opposing the U.S....