Debra Bendis
Varieties of service
I like the energy and talent in our praise group, but invariably I'm the one who asks if the bass player could turn
down his amp. I've also been known to ask if we could sing more songs that let
Jesus down off of the cross.
Adjusting to quiet
While on retreat recently, I picked up Patrick Leigh
Fermor's A Time to Keep Silence. I
was making my own transition from noisy life and noisy mind to four days of
...
Street papers and relationships
I'm a big fan of
street newspapers, and in particular of StreetWise
...
The new, old India
"In the ordinary course of human affairs countries churn slowly.
. . and then there are moments of special upheaval, when empires depart, when
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Grit and grace
True Grit has
a lot of competition in the upcoming Oscar award night, February 27. It's not
...
Years of learning and unlearning
Eugene Peterson's new memoir, The Pastor, will be out in February (Century subscribers can read the excerpt from the book
in the February 8 issue.) If any pastor has claimed the vocation, it's
Peterson, who has grounded and inspired pastors for many years with books that
include Under the Unpredictable Plant
and The Contemplative Pastor.
What good is solitude?
It's
a new year, with new opportunities to banter around familiar clichés such as
"taking time on the journey," cultivating "spirituality but not religion" and
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Getting through Advent
Time
to do the Advent thing, I thought last Saturday night as my husband and I
prepared to study the Annunciation passage with an adult ed class. My mind went
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Challenges for missions
I'd like to see this award-winning journalist's book read by
all Christians--from evangelicals who believe that their life's calling is to save
souls to those Christians who, while denouncing proselytizing, feel called to offer
compassionate, practical aid to those who need help. For either of the above
missionary types, Griswold dispels illusions. She is fearless in following a story
into the most remote village, and wise in her understanding of how religions
collide and inflame and exacerbate volatile situations.
Feral houses in the fallen city
A few weeks ago I traveled to Detroit with
friends who wanted to show us their hometown of Wyandotte, Michigan, just south
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Doing the global-action wave
When Century
editor-at-large Bill McKibben visited the White House last month, he left disappointed. After driving
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Nature’s Second Chance, by Steven I. Apfelbaum
Back in the '70s when Steven Apfelbaum told his mom he was
studying for a degree in ecology, his mother didn't know what to think. Unable
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The Luther walk
Walk along with Century contributor Sarah Hinlicky Wilson and her husband Andrew
Lars Wilson as they retrace the journey Martin Luther made from Erfut, Germany,
to Rome in 1510—500 years ago this year.
Nine Lives
“Today, we live with this illusion that we know the world," says
William Dalrymple. "The reality, of course, is. . .that there's huge
parts of the world which we know absolutely nothing about, particularly
in areas of religion and philosophy." For most of us, India is one of
those places.
A powerful new pill
What would happen if we were to discover that an existing pill, one
already used for legitimate medical reasons and so important that it
wouldn’t be banned, was also effective in inducing abortions?
Back to Sunday school?
A friend of mine was dismayed when
Sunday school teachers at her church proposed a new Sunday school
schedule for fall: classes held weekly except for the third Sunday of
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A Gate at the Stairs
Lorrie Moore, whose short-story collections (Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?...
The noisy supper
This winter I had the opportunity to observe a Caravaggio painting upclose and often: his Supper at Emmaus (1601) was on loan to the Art Institute of Chicago from its permanent home in London’s National Gallery. From the Century offices, it was only a few steps across Michigan Avenue to see this vibrant, dramatic painting.