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Doing Something Practical - Mass
Though mildly irreverent in its portrayal of Roman Catholicism and Christianity in general, I have found the now decade-old British television program Father Ted to be an insightful critique both of Christianity and of human nature in general...
O Lord, Our Lord, Your Excellent Name
The hymn from our Summer 2008 issue.
A Sort-Of Kind-Of Cosmological Variant of the Ontological Argument
Hear me now: I am no fan of natural theology. Nein! God considered as a proposition strikes me as laughably implausible. I believe in God because I believe in the incarnate Son, not the other way around. But then, since the Son implies God in the more familiar divine-attribute guise, I do occasionally have to consider God in this form. I’m OK with all the usuals. Immortal, invisible, God only wise, omniscient, omnipotent. I recently discovered, however, a divine attribute that I could not wrap my mind around. This one: God is big.
Mary and the Incarnation of Hope
We have a Mary tree in our neighborhood. More accurately, we have a tree on which the image of the Virgin Mary has appeared. A little over two years ago, a car crashed into the tree, causing significant damage to both car and tree. A few months later the elderly owner of the tree was on his roof doing some work when he slipped and fell off. His neighbor across the street heard the scream and looked out the window. There standing next to the fallen man was the tree with the image of the Virgin Mary revealed in the accident-damaged trunk. The elderly man made a miraculous (after a thirty-day hospital stay) recovery, and the tree has been a place of local pilgrimage for the devout and the curious alike ever since...
Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace
I’ve been noticing lately how all around us in the mainline churches military imagery is being carefully and quietly plucked out of our worship language. Partly it is (cowardly) discomfort with the violence and apocalypticism of the Scriptures. Partly it is (sensible) worry that the imagery will be co-opted to support a vicious political ideology. Curious as to its treatment in the ELCA, I took a look at the new and much-disputed Evangelical Lutheran Worship. I had three hymns in mind as test cases for the imagery of war...