This month millions of families around the world will gather dutifully and joyfully for a traditional ritual meal. Around the edges of some of the more traditional gatherings—the ones where the chief chefs and hosts are grandparents or the age of grandparents—the siblings and cousins of the next-oldest generation will begin to talk together.
In October, a
newly formed Right to Life group sponsored a week-long conference, entitled
"Abortion and Feminism," on the campus of Yale Divinity School. The
pro-choice posters posted by the Students for Reproductive Justice made it
clear that seminarians are not of one mind on the issue.
The final exam in my theology class surprised me. Instead of complex
essay questions, there was one simple question: defend the grammar of the
Magnificat.
The greatest Christmas carol in history was not written by Irving Berlin or Nat King Cole. The greatest carol is not “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” or “White Christmas” or even “Silent Night.” The greatest carol was composed 2,000 years ago by a pregnant teenage girl who was visiting her cousin Elizabeth.
My wife and I recently went to see William Inge's play Picnic,
which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. It was a riveting performance. I
was moved by how deeply the characters struggle to figure out who they
are in their corner of the world, a small town in Kansas.
