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Rediscovering the Enchanted World
Allow me some magic. Some dark, mammalian creature moves swiftly across the field outside my window at middle distance between the treeline and me. It traces a smooth, straight line across my field of vision, just far enough away in the early dawn light to be indistinct. Could Maxwell, the neighbor cat, be that far →
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DAVID BENTLEY HART FINDS A WAY OUT OF HELL
David Bentley Hart’s book about hell, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation, is brief, which is appropriate since hell is not something a Christian believes in, strictly speaking. Belief, in the creeds, is reserved for real things like a God who creates from nothing, a Christ who dies for the forgiveness of →
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The Long Longing
An Advent devotional I wrote for the Fleming Rutledge-oriented site Advent Begins in the Dark by the folks behind the Crackers & Grape Juice podcast… https://crackersandgrapejuice.com/the-long-longing/ →
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How to Hunker Down for Advent: A Review of Fleming Rutledge’s New Book
It’s Advent! In liturgically-oriented churches, tables and pulpits are draped in purple. (Or perhaps a dark shade of blue, which to my mind is a nefarious invention of the liturgical-industrial complex.) Four-candled wreaths tick off the Sundays before Christmas. In homes, Advent calendars adorn walls. And yet so much is missing. “I have never seen →
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#1 (& a Recap) Heartlands Best Reads of 2018: The Which-Way Tree
It’s difficult to choose the best ‘best read.’ One of my criteria, (to add once again to the list I outlined at the beginning of this countdown), is that if the book sticks with me in ways that feed my imagination and my own writing…if my world feels larger for having read the book…it has →
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Burning from Beginning to End with Scott Cairns
It’s all here. Beginnings and endings. Heaven and hell. Divine intentions and bodily appetites. That’s what you get with the poet Scott Cairns. Look for the kitchen sink. I’m sure it’s in there, too. Recently I came back for a season to Philokalia: New & Selected Poems, Cairns’ 2002 collection. It’s as rich and evocative →
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In Praise of Bad Writing: David Bentley Hart’s New Testament
The New Testament, as translated by the influential Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart, is bad. But that’s what makes it such a good read for Christians who need their settled understandings tweaked. Hart’s new translation doesn’t strive for literary heights. He has an ear for beautiful language, something that comes through in all of his →
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A Quick Reminder of Why Wesley Still Matters
John Wesley has been claimed by so many different heirs and used to so many and varied ends that it is refreshing to have someone like Hal Knight come along and point us back to the source. John Wesley: Optimist of Grace, his new entry in the Cascade Companions series designed for nonspecialist readers, comes →
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Letter to My Haitian Neighbor As You Leave Town
I saw you yesterday pulling on a frayed nylon cord to tie down the mattresses on the roof of your car. You’re leaving town and we never got to say ‘hello.’ I’ve seen you in the Food Lion and the Wal-mart and I’ve been tempted to try to speak. But my high school French, which →
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Squinting Through This Latent, Bleak Obscurity with Scott Cairns
“Just now, we squint to see the Image through this latent, bleak obscurity. One day, we’ll see the Image— as Himself—gleaming from each face. Just now, I puzzle through a range of incoherencies; but on that day, the scattered fragments will cohere.” If you don’t recognize 1 Corinthians 13 in this translation, perhaps that good. →
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