In The New York Times, the writer and literary critic Maud Newton – who was raised in a fervently religious household and now describes her own religious views as “uncertain” – writes about visiting the Holy Land: When I was young, my mother had a feverish conversion and started a church in our living room. I’d always been a tiny bit anxious that I might one day follow suit, hear the calling myself, start roaming the streets, preaching salvation. A committed... Read more
Over at the InterVarsity website “The Well,” my Christianity Today colleague Katelyn Beaty wrote a lovely profile of Dr. Karen Swallow Prior, of Liberty University, and her “seamless vocation”: Now, I’m getting to see Karen — who is spending this break finishing a biography of social reformer and abolitionist Hannah More — in her daily rhythms. And during writing breaks and walks to the barn and evening conversations, I’m starting to see the threads that tie Karen’s life into a... Read more
My friend Jon Merritt is a brave, wise writer, and everyone should read the excerpt from his new book that appears in April’s Christianity Today : I can’t tell you how many times something like this occurred. I remember those three vividly, and when I let my mind wander, I can still see the events in my mind like I’m watching an old 8mm film. I guess it doesn’t matter how many times it happened, only that it did. And it singed... Read more
Every week in church, we recite the Apostle’s Creed. I didn’t grow up doing this, so it took me a while to memorize it, and I find it to be very meaningful every week. So I found this meditation especially meaningful, in which the author thinks through each phrase of the creed. If you’re not familiar with it, it may imbue the creed with meaning; if you’re too familiar, it may help you see it anew: I believe Not I... Read more
Here’s an interesting piece: the case for creating — and video games: Things progressed. Servers popped up where players could work together in a world. Some players replicated real-world buildings and spaces. Conferences were held. People started to wonder about applications outside of video games: education? design? urban planning? Mojang, the maker of Minecraft, is now in partnership with the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), the UN agency promoting sustainable towns and cities. Block by Blockbrings master Minecraft builders into a city that... Read more
Over at Christianity Today, an absolutely compelling interview with Kay Warren (Rick Warren’s wife) about their year of “grieving dangerously” after their son Matthew’s tragic suicide last year: I said at Matthew’s memorial service, “We’re devastated, but not destroyed.” I don’t know that you ever stop being devastated by catastrophic loss. In the last year-and-a-half of his life, we lived right on the edge every day. I would talk about it with close friends and say, “It’s like sitting on the... Read more
I spent a couple hours this weekend first compiling and then keeping an eye on my fantasy baseball draft. I’m in a league with six of my colleagues and seven of our students. It’s the first year I’ve played, but I grew up watching the Red Sox (my Dad was born and raised in south Boston) and loving the sport, and I’m already anticipating getting into the groove, thinking about the sport every day once again. So I thought this... Read more
March Madness is upon us, and with it, all things basketball are important once again. The High Calling has this interview about “sports for the glory of God” with Pastor Stephen Chen, who serves as a pastor to, among others, NBA star Jeremy Lin: Intelligent, high achieving people can be good because they want to do a lot for the Lord, and yet it’s a danger because of the tendency to say, “If we have the programs right or sing... Read more
The Curator (which has a new look!) published an interesting little piece on the trend toward transparency in food systems and the importance of a very old institution: We should be encouraged to note that a people-based food system isn’t just a trend; it’s the model by which most of the world’s food is grown. Family farmers—those who farm the small plots next to their homes for their own sustenance as well as a source of income—produce 70 percent of the... Read more
We often talk about the importance of stepping away from our screens and iDevices in order to “unplug.” Going cold turkey, we feel, will help us decrease our dependence on our devices. But Casey N. Cep had a fascinating piece over at the New Yorker‘s culture blog about “the pointlessness of unplugging”: Unplugging from devices doesn’t stop us from experiencing our lives through their lenses, frames, and formats. We are only ever tourists in the land of no technology, our... Read more
Mark D. Roberts
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