……………… I was recently asked by one of my favorite educator/poet/theologians, Callid Keefe-Perry, to review his new 45-minute documentary film, Made As Makers. I felt honored. ……………… “Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot name them” ~Dana Gioia To paraphrase the illustrative Peter Rollins, many people of faith feel a desire to…
Category
Theology
When Poetry Is At Its Best | Art by John McCormick
Many people of faith feel a desire to speak about that which is most precious to them, about that which has transformed their lives, that which they feel has liberated them. Yet that needs to be contrasted with the concern that every time we speak of that source, that place of liberation, we somehow do…
There is no Room in the Bible for Piper’s “Masculine Christianity”
“God is spirit,” announces Jesus by the well (John 4:24). This is one of only two definitional propositions about God in scripture. The other is “God is love.” … This is a blog post in accordance and solidarity with Rachel Held Evens and her challenge for men to push back against John Pipers “masculine Christianity.”…
The Will To Embrace: Sin and Family | Photography by Eric Cahan
“…the will to give ourselves to others and “welcome” them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgment about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity. The will to embrace precedes any “truth” about others and any construction of their “justice.” This will is absolutely indiscriminate and…
Prolepsis: This Is What The Future Will Look Like | Art by Nuam Gabo
“Prolepsis is a Greek theater word. It is when the crowd–which is usually all the normal people in the play–come out and tell you at the beginning what’s about to happen at the end of the story and the meaning it has. So that you, the audience–when you’re watching the play–can come to see the…
God Has Breasts and Is Not Omnipotent
The bible never says that God is omnipotent or that he created out of nothing… We get our modern ideas of Gods omnipotence from the Hebrew name El-Shaddai wich is most often translated as “the almighty” but many scholars today suggest that God of the two mountains or the large breasted one would be a…
Christians Are Atheists and Anarchists
“What is interesting here in Daniel (Daniel 3: 13-18)…is the conflation of anarchism and atheism. You’ll recall that the word “atheist” was coined by the Romans to describe the early Christians. This was because Christians rejected the gods of the Romans, denied their legitimacy, ultimacy and existence. In short, there is a conflation between the…
Open Hands & Closed Fists: Mitch Albom, Rabbis & Truth
I remember sitting with my wise old Rabbi once and hearing a baby scream. He looked at me and said, “Did you ever notice how babies come into the world with their tiny fists clenched?” “Yes,” I said. “Do you know how our sages explain that? They say that babies, not knowing any better, clench…
Catherine Keller on Occupy Wall Street and Apocalypse
Apo-calypso. In its root sense is a dis/closure, an opening that may come as an explosion—for what has been kept sealed under pressure opens with a bang. In Revelation, the seals break open to vision the hideous layers of slaughter, deprivation, the trade of luxury (oil and wine) against need (barley and wheat), drought, flood,…
A creative, improvisational style of life
Jesus contradicts the Mosaic law not to impose an alternative law, but to propose the practice of grace. A life lived by the practice of grace is going to have an unpredictable, nonconforming aspect to it. Many of the central concerns of human society (the rule of law, the sanctity of life, sexual relations, contracts,…