Trees are not just things When the ancient trees spoke wisely and moved slowly, heroically in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the…
Fire Sermon (Jamie Quatro, 2018)
The depths of desire I have read a lot of good novels over the years, stories that captured my imagination, drawing me into a…
The New Copernicans: An Interview with Author John Seel
Books / Pluralistic World / Spirituality
In his The New Copernicans: Millennials and the Survival of the Church, cultural analyst, social-impact consultant, and author, John Seel, draws attention to a…
Less: A Novel (Andrew Sean Greer, 2017)
A mediocre life searching for love I decided to read the novel, Less by Andrew Greer because it won a Pulitzer this year. “A…
The Cloud of Knowing (Ellis Potter, 2018)
The clouds of scripture and reality Ellis Potter suggests we can best understand reality by seeing it in terms of two great divisions. The…
Sources of the Christian Self: A Cultural History of Christian Identity (J.M. Houston and J. Zimmerman, 2018)
A history of Christian faithfulness The calling of God to his people to be faithful never changes, but the specific shape of faithfulness changes…
The New Copernicans (David John Seel, 2018)
The warning signs Some warnings are jarring and immediate. “Mayday,” for example. Most, however, are subtle and incremental, like a pan-pan warning: “Pay attention.”…
Albrecht Dürer (Stacey Bieler, 2017)
A restless craving for perfection Artists, like all of us, are partly a product of their time. Whether our posture towards the world is…
On Reading Augustine’s Confessions
Books / Faith / Spirituality
The uneasy feeling I had in anticipation of reading the Confessions was no surprise. I had read it before. It had stunned me—the beauty…
No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria (Rania Abouzeid, 2018)
Humanizing a brutal conflict The basic chronology is well known. In December 2010, a desperate street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in…