Month: August 2017
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Social Justice
Any list of contested phrases in American Christianity today is going to include “social justice.” It’s not just that talking about social justice makes folks uncomfortable. The prophets were doing that all the way back to Amos and before, pointing out when Israel failed to hear the cry of the needy, failed to protect the […]
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Freaks & Monsters – Being an Artist in the South – My interview with Nick Norwood concludes – Part 3 of 3
Nick Norwood, director of the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians at Columbus State University, is also a great poet. Like McCullers, he writes about what he knows – the American South and its eccentricities. In previous segments of this essay we talked about the universal themes in McCullers’ work and her sense […]
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Five Things I Learned from a Cowboy (Church)
I love a horse trough baptism as much as the next guy, but I have to admit that I’m a traditionalist at heart. I appreciate the time-worn beauty of prayers passed down through generations, the mystery and splendor of a good four-part choir, the movement and purposeful flow of a well-planned order of worship, and […]
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Carson’s Place – My Interview with Nick Norwood Continues – part 2 of 3
In the first part of my interview with Nick Norwood, director of the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians at Columbus State University, we talked about the universal themes of McCullers’ writing. Today we talk about the strong sense of place in her work and the way Columbus, Georgia, her hometown, informs it. So we […]
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In Which I Tumble Out of the Tumble In and Head to Terlingua – A West Texas Adventure
The bright lights and hubbub of the big city (Archer City, that is – population ~1800) were starting to get to me, so I decided to head even further out into West Texas. Out to where the skies stretch out like God’s own Imax screen. Out to where coyotes howl at the setting sun and […]
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The Spiritual Isolation of Carson McCullers – An Interview with Nick Norwood – part 1 of 3
So, I’ve got a thing for Carson McCullers. Anybody who read this blog through the McCullers-palooza that was her 100th birthday celebration in February will know that this Southern writer speaks to me. The characters that she introduced us to in such classics as The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Member of the Wedding, and The Ballad of […]
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What Goes Without Saying – Some Thoughts on Charlottesville
Let me begin with the ‘ought to’s. It ought to go without saying that what happened in Charlottesville at a gathering of white supremacists and white nationalists was an ugly display of our divisions in this current moment. It ought to go without saying that an ideology that believes the white race is superior to […]
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Strong, Resilient, Independent – the Characters of Virginia Reeves – part 3 of 3
Work Like Any Other, Virginia Reeves’s debut novel, has some very memorable characters that are worth getting to know. In previous segments of this interview we have talked about resiliency in strange times and the meaning of Alabama. If you’ve read the book, you’ll enjoy this segment because we get down deeper into the characters […]
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A Border with No Country: A Review of All the Pretty Horses
“This is still good country. Yeah. I know it is. But it aint my country.… Where is your country? he said. I don’t know, said John Grady. I don’t know where it is. I don’t know what happens to country.” (299) Not counting the movies of Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men, […]
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Alabama – The Character – my interview with Virginia Reeves continues – part 2 of 3
Can place be the primary character in a book? You can make the case for that in Virginia Reeves’s debut novel, Work Like Any Other. In the previous segment of this interview, we discussed maintaining hope in strange times. In this segment we talk two great states – Alabama and Montana. Tell me about Alabama because […]
Heartlands 