Why debates are a good idea (and a bad idea, too)
Some debates never end. Most of the endless ones are pointless, too. Aggies or Longhorns? County Line or Rudy’s? Hymns or praise songs? Momo’s or Cactus Café? In our heads we care about them, but deep down in our hearts,…
Picturing Easter
Easter Sunrise Service at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Michael Rougier, 1955. All week we’ve been working with the idea of how to visually represent Easter. The explorations led in many different directions before ending with these, various Easter scenes from around the…
The end of art & the school of life
First Things has an article by Roger Kimball entitled The End of Art. If you’re interested in art and its interaction with religion, you might enjoy Kimball’s essay. Here’s a taste: "By the nineteenth century, art had long been free…
The last two points to last Sunday’s sermon
In my sermon last Sunday I stressed that the story of the Scriptures–Our Story–is the story of salvation, and because of this we can be confident that God loves us and is working in all things for our good. But…
Alexander, we hardly knew ye.
Dare we allow the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn yesterday pass unnoticed? His journey from adored Soviet dissident to reviled critic of the west was such an important milestone of my younger years, its hard to believe that today the vast…
Mary Grace the Neurotic
“The book struck her directly over her left eye.” If I had a Top 5 Fiction Sentences list, which I probably should, this would be on it. Recently I re-read Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Revelation,” a story about people in…