I will finish out this Christmas season with a link to a recent issue of CBE’s Mutuality Magazine: Rediscovering Mary.  The issue features a series of articles exploring Mary the mother of Jesus from a range of different angles. Mary is an interesting character – and a brave young woman. The best article in the issue (although I am not an unbiased reader) digs into this aspect of Mary in a little more detail: Mary the Brave: Neither Meek nor... Read more

By Corey Farr Myth: Singles are Incomplete Hungry hormones aside, this anxious and sometimes all-consuming desire to find a girl to spend my life with came from what I had learned in Christian circles since I was 7 years old: sometimes special (and strange) people are “called” not to marry; but for everyone else, God has a special person picked out just for you – “the one.” Someone you are to wait for, but also search for, and of course... Read more

First we light the candle for HOPE because Jesus is our hope. Second, we light the candle for PEACE because Jesus is our hope and peace. Third, we light the candle for JOY because Jesus brings joy. Fourth, we light the candle for LOVE because Jesus is love. Finally we light the center candle. This is the CHRIST candle. Jesus is born. Jesus has come. Jesus is our salvation. Let us pray: Great God of love and light, we thank... Read more

O God, you make us glad by the yearly festival of the birth of your only Son Jesus Christ: Grant that we, who joyfully receive him as our Redeemer, may with sure confidence behold him when he comes to be our Judge; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. or this O God, you have caused this holy night to shine with the brightness of the true Light: Grant that we, who have... Read more

When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Jn 8:12 I recently began to read a new book, The Liturgy of Creation by Michael LeFebvre. The central premise of this book is that we will best understand Genesis 1 when we first understand how calendars work in the Old and New Testament. Michael LeFebvre is a pastor... Read more

Awesome!: A Georgia family got a special holiday surprise last week after finding an owl hiding inside their Christmas tree. The discovery came last Thursday evening when Katie McBride Newman and her two children, India and Jack, were finishing dinner. India, 10, had started to clear the table and was in another room when Newman heard her exclaim, “Oh my gosh!” “She comes very dramatically into the dining room and goes, ‘Mama, that ornament scared me,’” Newman told CNN. “Then... Read more

538: Millennials have earned a reputation for reshaping industries and institutions — shaking up the workplace, transforming dating culture, and rethinking parenthood. They’ve also had a dramatic impact on American religious life. Four in ten millennials now say they are religiously unaffiliated, according to the Pew Research Center. In fact, millennials (those between the ages of 23 and 38) are now almost as likely to say they have no religion as they are to identify as Christian. 1 For a long time, though, it wasn’t... Read more

When Michael Gorman’s Inhabiting the Cruciform God appeared I read it and even assigned it for a class at Northern and it was there that I began tracking more closely the rather fresh use of “theosis” as a NT category for what is sometimes called “union” with Christ or “participation” in Christ. An Orthodox friend of mine had put me in touch in previous years with the Orthodox theory of theosis, which I found stimulating even if quite strange to... Read more

St Francis: A Kidnapping and a Creche, by Ruth Tucker If there had been an Assisi Inquirer, the story would have been the headliner: “Thirty-year-old homeless man kidnaps seventeen-year-old girl.” The date was pre-dawn Palm Sunday, 1212. My segment on Clare in Extraordinary Women of Christian History begins thus: Just when it seems it would be impossible to surpass the story of Heloise for sheer suspense and sex appeal, here comes Clare of Assisi (1194-1253). At first glance she is... Read more