December 2011
26 posts
“… nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love, and it...”
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christmas Eve 1943, writing from prison to his niece and best friend
“Because of piety’s penchant for taking itself too seriously, theology does...”
– Tom Oden (via Philip Tallon on Twitter)
“Still, there’s that faint glimmer of hope we feel when we sense, in other...”
– Teju Cole. This is something I’ve thought about off and on over the years, but I’d like to reflect on it more deeply and carefully: the sense we have that paying attention and having attention paid to us — noticing and being noticed — is in some way redemptive.
“Let us, then, meditate upon the Nativity just as we see it happening in our own...”
– Martin Luther
Mary Karr, "Descending Theology: Christ Human"
Such a short voyage for a god, and you arrived in animal form so as not to scorch us with your glory. Your mask was an infant’s head on a limp stalk, sticky eyes smeared blind, limbs rendered useless in swaddle. You came among beasts as one, came into our care or its lack, came crying as we all do, because the human frame is a crucifix, each skeletos borne a lifetime. Any wanting soul...
“God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in...”
– go read the whole excerpt from one of Bonhoeffer’s prison letters over at Nijay Gupta’s blog
“In our strange cultural moment it is necessary to make a distinction between...”
– The Book of Books - What Literature Owes the Bible - NYTimes.com (via ayjay)
“I don’t like this expression “First World problems.” It is false and it is...”
– Teju Cole on the “#firstworldproblems” meme, in a series of tweets compiled by Alexis Madrigal (via risenapes)
my year in books
Here’s a list of my most memorable reading experiences from the year, although not all of these were published in 2011.
In Adam’s Fall: A Meditation on the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin by Ian McFarland was probably the most stimulating theology book I read this year. McFarland, following Barth, stresses the retrospective character of the doctrine of original sin: in light of...
“Ah, so big a question! That is the whole question of theology, you see! I should...”
– Karl Barth, answering the question from a student, “What one thing, sir, would you tell a young pastor today if you were asked, is necessary in this day and age to pastor a Church?” Best advice I’ve read in a long time.
“Advent celebrates the coming of the King, but the Christian tradition has always...”
– Peter Leithart
“When the ground crumbles under their feet, [people] *have* to leap even into...”
– W. H. Auden (via Mockingbird)
“Here’s a thing I will say now without hesitation, unqualified and important. The...”
– Peter Hitchens on his brother Christopher (via ayjay)
“This basic extension of empathy is one of the great barriers in understanding...”
– Ta-Nehisi Coates
Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent
(given at Church of the Apostles, Columbia, South Carolina)
Isaiah 65:17-25; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28; John 1:6-8, 19-28.
Heavenly Father, you gave your apostles grace truly to believe and to preach your word. Grant that we might love what they believed and preach what they taught, through Christ our Lord, Amen.
A couple of months ago, I was in Italy with some good friends. One of the...
"Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?" by... →
“You know, in my own life, when I would talk to people about my childhood, when I...”
– Justin Torres, author of one of my favorite novels from this year. Reminds me of a quote from Updike: “Families teach us how love exists in a realm beyond liking or disliking, coexisting with indifference, rivalry, and even antipathy.”
new blog post by me: "It can't be a lie" →
“… if we [Christians] are to be kingdom-announcers, modelling the new way of...”
– Tom Wright, from his book The Challenge of Jesus. I still think this is one of the best definitions of Christian prayer I’ve encountered. As Wright puts it elsewhere, “our vocation as Christians includes the vocation to be in prayer at the place where the world is in pain…. We are...
“In times of war even the crudest kind of positive affection between persons...”
– W. H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety
“And what else did [the first witnesses of Jesus’ public ministry] see?...”
– Oliver O’Donovan
“It has just become the tale that middle-to-highbrow critics tell — ever since...”
– Alan Jacobs