It’s Always Apocalypse, Now

December 21, 2012 By 6 Comments
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One more midnight gone, but for Christians---especially in Advent---we live always in the end-times. And that's good. As a small, fearful child with a galloping case of scruples, I was terrified of the End of the World. Those were apocalyptic times for Catholic school kids, the late fifties and early sixties. There were the weekly drop drills intended to prepare us for the nuclear annihilation that was always thisclose; Sister Maria Consuelo, our Cuban refugee third-grade teacher, was always … [Read more...]

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Home for Advent, Christmas, and Ever After

December 1, 2012 By 5 Comments
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Really, I tell you, never, never, never count God out. Yesterday, while I was bewailing the uncertainty of my future and being lectured by Dr Phil in the Sky, the band of angels who are my family and friends were tying up the last loose ends of a conspiracy to get me not only a home, but Home. Next Friday I will wing my way out of Ur . . . or Egypt . . . or Dayton, Ohio, and head back to the City of the Angels. Waiting for me will be a small, manageable, even affordable by LA standards … [Read more...]

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Homeless in Advent, Thank God

November 30, 2012 By 9 Comments
Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Census at Bethlehem

I've been dreading this Advent, usually my favorite season. In a time ripe with promise, all I could see was loss. But then God answered my prayer---with a big fat stupid No. Over at the Patheos Atheist Channel (a concept that still makes me giggle), blogger Bob Seidensticker has been engaged in a long and, to him, frustrating attempt to convince believers in general (and Christians in particular) that they are deluded, because prayer doesn't work and miracles can't be proved. The frustrating … [Read more...]

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