Life in limbo for an immigrant teen
What the people see in Jesus is more than raw power.
There are 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. The administration has to somehow prioritize who is slated for deportation.
Here are some projections and assumptions I face in my current context—and responses that reflect what the church I serve is called to be.
Two churches in my town offer a contrast in style, substance, and mission. We both love Jesus and long to love our neighbors.
Like Dmitri Karamazov, Robert Mapplethorpe knows that the beautiful is a battleground—and he's happy to play on the devil's side.
How do we respond to the issues that trouble people deeply? Jesus and the lawyer have a proper debate, but the lawyer continues to wrestle and cannot let go.
Jesus sends his disciples out “like lambs in the midst of wolves.” We live in a time when intimacy is erased, privacy laughable, rhetoric rude and rusty. The notion of going out as lambs to wolves is apt, even if the wolves and lambs may be interchangeable.
War No More, edited by Lawrence Rosenwald
This comprehensive collection, spanning 300 years and 150 authors, includes excerpts from political writers such as Martin Luther King Jr., Daniel Berrigan, Dorothy Day, Shirley Chisholm, and Barack Obama, but also a surprising array of artistic voices: Mark Twain, Joan Baez, Denise Levertov, and Bill Watterson.
Ordinary grace
The reversals in this book aren’t easy. There is nothing sentimental or giddy about them. They are real. They are ordinary.
Papal politics and perils
Politi's account reveals much of what happened among the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel on those days in March 2013.
Light’s remaining mysteries
Yes, we’re surrounded by ubiquitous light, but its mysteries have not been wholly conquered.
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, by Max Porter
Max Porter’s debut novel, which hovers between poetry and prose, illustrates the ways in which grief can be simultaneously violent and gentle.
Missionaries among Muslims
To lionize the missionary’s courage, Muslims were cast as implacable adversaries and served as the quintessential foil.
How does it end?
The apocalypse, it seems, is cultural and psychological rather than historical. One can only hope that this theory is right.