Mar
29
2013
Aug
7
2011
Cares and Prayers
Oh, to entwine the thread of prayer around
These cares and woes, the daily, hourly cares,
Sep
3
2010
Starry, Starry Dark Night of the Soul
or Insanity and Spiritual Songs
Van Gogh’s work has been regarded by some as “hallucinatory,” however his letters show that few artists were as intelligent and rational. His work was not the product of his dark times but of his struggle against them.
“I am feeling well just now… I am not strictly speaking mad, for my mind is absolutely normal in the intervals, and even more so than before. But during the attacks it is terrible—and then I lose consciousness of everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in danger and makes haste in what he does.” [1]
Feb
27
2010
Disgraceland
Some great quotes from an interview by Barbara Demarco-Barrett with author Mary Karr:
“[My young son] came flouncing in in his Power Ranger pyjamas and said “I wanna go to church.” I said “Why?” and he said, “To see if God’s there.” It was about the only sentence he could have said that would have gotten me to go. So we did this thing we called God-a-rama in which we went to various temples and mosques and zendos. I had no interest in going to church so I brought a latté and a paperback.
Feb
25
2010
Resurrection Poem
Descending Theology: The Resurrection
From the far star points of his pinned extremities,
cold inched in—black ice and squid ink—
till the hung flesh was empty.
Lonely in that void even for pain,
he missed his splintered feet,
the human stare buried in his face.
He ached for two hands made of meat
he could reach to the end of.
In the corpse’s core, the stone fist
of his heart began to bang
on the stiff chest’s door, and breath spilled
back into that battered shape. Now
it’s your limbs he comes to fill, as warm water
shatters at birth, rivering every way.
Feb
21
2010
Forever Young
Heavenly Father,
Today we celebrate
Your work in Your Son,
the One who said,
“Behold, I make all things new.”
Aug
18
2009
Old Saints
The Master loiters in nursing homes.
Waiting on those who wait for Him,
With those whose grip on life is failing,
Who can do nothing now but pray.
Jun
17
2009
Outward Man
This way a silhouette before heaven’s smile
That way a solitary shadow upon prison walls
August yet base
Is the profile of man. Continue reading
Apr
15
2009
Why are the Reformed so unimaginative?
[from Auburn Avenue blog]
The Christian imagination
Each semester at the Bucer Institute we have a course we call “The Church and Culture” which is basically a catch-all for any topic we’d like to talk about. Our “Church and Culture” class for this semester was held this past Saturday on the topic of “The Christian Imagination” and it was outstanding. (Check out the MP3s when they are ready for downloading, you won’t regret it.).
Too many good things were said to repeat them all, but here are a few of them:
- A woman living on the frontier in the 19th century commented on the quilts she made: “I make them warm to keep my family from freezing; I make them beautiful to keep my heart from breaking.”
- Poetry humbles us by giving us more than we can understand. It’s “bigger” than we are.
- Why are the Reformed so unimaginative? Artists tend to arise from traditions that allow mystery, not from traditions that see mystery as a threat to the “system” and therefore always seek to explain (or define) it away.
- The literal is too skeletal and minimalistic to carry the grand load of truth that the poetic can easily transport.
Some of the things covered were: the importance of the imagination; the imagination and theology; how to cultivate a sanctified imagination; a primer on poetry; and the deeper meaning of watching the dead bodies of plague victims being catapulted over the walls of a besieged city. All in all, it was more fun than ought to be legal.
OUT NOW
COMING SOON
Bible Matrix blog-
IN THE WORKS
Jordan Complete
