Weaving a crown out of thorns,they placed it on his head, and a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” –Matt. 27:29 They talked for over an hour. Near the end, after they’d been sitting in silence for a while, Burns said quietly, “Do you know what Christ died of?” Rivers looked surprised, but answered readily enough. “Suffocation. Ultimately the position makes it impossible to go on inflating the... Read more
for AmSpec. I liked it more than their hed/subhed imply, but it’s not what the philosophers would call “good”: My initial reaction on hearing that Disney was remaking Sleeping Beautyfrom the point of view of Maleficent was, “Oh God, not another one.” Batman, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Snow White: Must everything get a gritty reboot? I’m surprised the recent My Little Pony show wasn’t called “My Little Pony: Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death.” And... Read more
But he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed. Departing from my previous practice of quoting the Gospels to give you this bit from Isaiah, because it gets at the reason this mystery is so important to me. When I was growing up my parents subscribed to Tikkun, a progressive Jewish magazine with the slogan, “To heal, repair, and transform the world. All the... Read more
Some of these images are terrific. (via Jesse Walker I think?) Read more
He advanced a little and fell prostrate in prayer, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.” This one’s really short and straightforward because there’s a song which more or less perfectly captures the acceptance & surrender which this mystery is mostly about for me. I already wrote some stuff about the Mountain Goats’ We Shall All Be Healed and it’s not like you guys were... Read more
Each year his parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom. After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to... Read more
When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, they took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord…. A couple years ago I was having some kind of argument with a freshman Hegelian. I’ll mangle his argument–I don’t remember it well enough and haven’t read Hegel–but what I took away from it was that everything in life served to advance ideas. Better and better ideas over time. So there’s a progressive view... Read more
on a terrific new film. And given my readership, I’ll note that Hedwig is one of the most fascinating and nuanced Christian characters I can remember in a recent movie which isn’t centrally concerned with faith: If We Are the Best! were The Breakfast Club, Allison would make over Claire—and the boys would just be accessories. We Are the Best! is Lukas Moodysson’s confection about middle-school punker chicks in early ’80s Stockholm. Klara (Mira Grosin) is the cute, strident one... Read more
MORE BABIES, until now I don’t think I’d realized how much the first three mysteries are like, babies everywhere. I’ve already posted a nice little Christmas ditty about eviction and racial violence, and anyway, I generally pray this mystery for my own rebirth of sobriety, my rescue from the nightmare basement. I pray to receive sobriety with the joy and gratitude with which Mary welcomed her Child, and to be protective of my very young sobriety as she protected and... Read more
In response to this question (and you can find a couple more links in that post). Keep ’em coming, y’all. A large list of resources focusing on legal rights from Sara Mayeux. Some of these links may be outdated but there’s a portion of the list which is broken up by state, which I’m guessing will be really useful to many of you. An American prison history reading list. Sara Mayeux (like other readers) also recommended The New Jim Crow,... Read more
Eve Tushnet
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