It’s T.S. Eliot’s birthday today, and if you’re like me, you haven’t read nearly as much Eliot as you think you should. The early twentieth-century poet and essayist became a Christian in his thirties, and though he always (and reasonably, given he lived through World War I) saw the world as a difficult, bleak place, [Read More...]
There’s a lot of talk these days about the importance of re-learning to work by hand, to make things, and to experience the kind of learning that we only experience through our bodies (instead of, say, through our computer screens). On this topic, I highly recommend Matthew Crawford’s wonderful, readable little book Shop Class as Soulcraft. Over [Read More...]
The New Yorker has been republishing bits and pieces of Flannery O’Connor’s prayer journals, which will be published in a book later this year. They’re locked down to subscribers, but even the small excerpts are wonderful to read. And my pastor put an excerpt in the church bulletin as a meditation this Sunday: All my [Read More...]
Over at The High Calling, Skye Jethani has written a probing, provocative reflection on the danger of evangelical austerity and the dangers of demanding that beauty submit to practicality. Likewise, I don’t know any church leader who would utterly deny the value of art. Most churches put astronomical amounts of their budgets into buildings, worship [Read More...]
This isn’t particularly erudite or thoughtful or insightful, but it did make me chuckle and feel a bit bad: frog photobombs NASA launch. [Read more...]
Over at the Paris Review blog, Casey N. Cep writes about cathedrals in Europe, and Ray Carver, and other things – and it’s lovely. They continue, when moments later Robert says, “Close your eyes now.” Now both blind, they keep moving across the paper, adding features of the cathedral silently. The catharsis of the encounter, rendered as [Read More...]
Well, this is interesting: some researchers thought that messiness – as opposed to tidiness – might serve a purpose. And so they did some research into messiness and found out some interesting things: When we analyzed the responses, we found that the subjects in both types of rooms came up with about the same number of [Read More...]
Katelyn Beaty (who is a colleague of mine at Christianity Today) recently wrote an excellent editorial about our “hunger for outrage” on the internet – and the problems it causes. Call it the tart deliciousness of moral outrage. From mayors’ sex scandals to pastors’ oddball comments to judges’ incoherent rulings, we are reminded 24/7 of the [Read More...]
Psalm 67:1-7 May the nations praise you, O God. Yes, may all the nations praise you. Let the whole world sing for joy, because you govern the nations with justice and guide the people of the whole world. Psalm 67:3-4 To be honest, we begin our relationship with God because of what’s in it for [Read More...]
I teach writing and edit for a living, so I talk to a lot of people who say that they wish they knew a few tricks to help their writing improve. It’s unfortunate but true: once you’re a grownup, on the hamster wheel of daily work, it’s hard to re-learn grammar rules and re-build your [Read More...]
Over at Fieldnotes, Gideon Strauss is recounting some of his own remarkable vocational history – starting with his work as a conscientious objector under apartheid in South Africa – and reflecting on identity and belonging at work: In my late teens I made a conscientious objection against serving in the military of apartheid South Africa, and as a [Read More...]
Lately, I’ve been getting a little tired of hearing people claim that there aren’t Christians making good art. Sure, Christians haven’t always been very good about making good art – and have made a lot of bad art – but there’s good out there, too. And I think sometimes that people who say it doesn’t exist just [Read More...]
Over at The High Calling, Jen Hanno Sandbulte reminds us that the disciples weren’t in leadership positions or fancy jobs when Jesus found them: they were fisherman, and tax collectors, and so on: If you think about a fisherman’s personality profile, I’m guessing you might find many who were introverts. When Jesus found these three [Read More...]
Yesterday, I was putting laundry away and changing the bedsheets and catching up on NPR, and I heard this piece about the new Apple iOS. In case you can’t listen to it right now, here’s the basic idea: the new operating system for iPhones and iPads is releasing very soon, and Apple is finally migrating [Read More...]
Psalm 65:1-13 Those who live at the ends of the earth stand in awe of your wonders. From where the sun rises to where it sets, you inspire shouts of joy. Psalm 65:8 Our translation of Psalm 65:8 reads, “Those who live at the ends of the earth stand in awe of your wonders. From [Read More...]
Today I got the sad news that Fr. Robert Farrar Capon, the theologian and writer (most famously of The Supper of the Lamb), has died. The Supper of the Lamb is the book that has most influenced my own work, as a writer and teacher (and cook!). It is, simply, the most wonderful food-related and possibly [Read More...]
Follow Patheos on
Copyright 2008-2013, Patheos. All rights reserved. Terms of Service | Patheos Privacy Policy | Site developed by Avalon Consulting, LLC
Follow Patheos
Evangelical: