Seeing in the rain I first met Karen Woods in May 2006 when Margie and I were invited to lead a weekend retreat at…
Strange Rites (Tara Isabella Burton, 2020)
Intelligence Briefing on the World of Religious Nones To love and respect someone requires understanding their world. This is especially true of those who…
Scripture’s Knowing (Dru Johnson, 2015)
A study in biblical epistemology Perhaps now more than ever, in a year filled with a pandemic, economic upheaval, racial reckoning, and an upcoming…
Poetry: Outside My Office Window
Outside My Office Window Sleek vehicles enclosing flesh, blood, souls hurtling over darkening earth, the bending world. Road thins into distance, roars and whines,…
A Blast of Ethics to the Face: The “Secular Lament” of Propagandhi’s Victory Lap
Consider the world of Ecclesiastes: it is a place of destruction, malaise, repetition, and despair “under the sun,” where even the beauty you see…
“No More of This”
Pentecost Sunday, May 31, 2020. 5:30 pm. The House Between. Margie and I did something we rarely do—we turned on the television news, WCCO…
Film comment: Elysium (2013)
When wealth divides I watched Elysium because I am fond of science fiction and believe it one of the best genres in which to…
The Green Frontier (Netflix); Ragnarok (Netflix); Evil (CBS)
Supernatural realities Although perspectives shaped by the Enlightenment—within or without the church—will have barely noticed, the world is rife with mystery, principalities, mystical voices,…
Old prayers in modern Vietnam: A meditative review
This collection of prayers from the early seventeenth century, edited by the poet Robert Hudson, travelled with me to Vietnam. For a second time,…
Murder Most Foul (Bob Dylan, 2020)
I am writing this isolated during the coronavirus pandemic. Writing is a solitary vocation, but this is different. Isolation sucks delight from life, replacing…