Buried as comment #381 in a recent post is an urgent prayer request from long-time reader and commenter Frank Sonnek (a.k.a., “fws”; a.k.a., “the gay confessional Lutheran”). I don’t know what it’s all about, and we don’t need to know. But, as a virtual community at this blog, let’s pray for Frank. And perhaps some of you have other needs, crises, and other kinds of prayer requests. Let’s pray for those too. (more…)
The blogger who goes by the name of Josephus Flavius quotes the 20th century Orthodox saint St. Nikolai of Žiča writing to a railroad engineer who complained about his boring job. He was writing about vocation and how seeing one’s work in relation to faith can transfigure its meaning:
You complain that you are tired of your job. All other activities seem more interesting to you, and you, and you are troubled and anguished about not being able to find something better. I thought about this for a long time before picking up my pen to answer you.
I tried to put my self in your place, and to play your part. I imagined myself at your worksite, in the locomotive car, in the midst of the roar of the machine and the pounding of the wheels. Sweaty, covered in soot, I cheerfully looked ahead. Behind me was arrayed an entire little people: old people, parents and children, nobility, diplomats, officials, peasants, workers, and day laborers.
Mollie Hemingway writes about the way the media addresses the late Stan Musial’s religion. Most of the obituaries ignored it completely, but she focuses on how it’s handled in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Here we are told that, yes, Musial was religious, but that he practiced it privately, never pushing it on anybody, and avoiding public displays. But Mollie (I can call her by her first name because I know her) then raises a question that transcends baseball: What constitutes a public display of faith? (more…)
One of the most important publication in the contemporary literary world is Poetry Magazine. Its editor is usually a distinguished poet. Lately, the editor of that periodical, Christian Wiman, stepped down from that position. What is, perhaps, less known is that several years ago Wiman embraced Christianity. He writes about that in a new book that will be released April 2, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer. In his book of poetry Every Riven Thing, Wiman writes about his struggle with cancer that led to his discovery of God. After the jump, read his poem by that name and an excerpt from a fascinating interview in Christianity Today. (more…)
Having lost its court case, Hobby Lobby is refusing to pay for abortifacient drugs, as mandated by Obamacare. So since January 1, it has been racking up fines of $1.3 million every day. There is a company that is putting its money where its convictions are. Does anyone know any other companies owned by pro-life individuals that are resisting the law and paying the price like this?
By Friday Hobby Lobby would have racked up $14.3 million dollars in fines from the IRS for bucking Obamacare. The company is facing $1.3 million dollars a day in fines for each day they choose not to comply with a piece of the health care law that was set to trigger for them on January 1.
The craft store chain announced in December because of religious objections they would face the fines for not providing certain types of birth control through their company health insurance.
Here we are, at our new digs at Patheos. For longtime readers wondering what has happened, read this explanation. For new readers, welcome to Cranach.
You can read about the blog, about me, and about our patron saint (if we had patron saints) Lucas Cranach in the various tabs at the top of the page. Suffice it to say for now that this is a “web log” in the old sense of interesting things I’ve found on the internet. Also that I am interested in all kinds of things, so that you will find here posts on current events, the arts, politics, history, technology, sports, books, movies, theology, and on and on. This is also a discussion blog. That is, college professor that I am, I like to pose questions, problems, and issues in need of thinking through, and enlist your aid in talking about them in the comment threads.
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