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How to Hold Fish with Chopsticks, Utagawa Kuiyoshi, British Museum, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
…Coram Deo means, literally, “before the face of God” and is a short-hand theological term which describes the human condition. We are living, all our days, minutes, thoughts, actions, words, hopes, desires, etc., before the living God. As the Psalmist sings…
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p/c Manuel Jota via unsplash
…With NFTs what matters is not the thing but the receipt of purchase. Transaction alone matters.
Strange times…
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p/c Thomas Borman via unsplash
“I’ve got some free time” someone says. What do they mean? What is this “free time” of which they speak? What differentiates this “free time” from other times? If I have it and then fill it with something (a beer and a game of checkers with my neighbor) is it still “free” or is it now enslaved (to checkers, my neighbor, and the beer shared between us)?
In other words, can “free time” be spent doing things or does the spending of it make it somehow “un-free” time?
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p/c Filpe Simo via Unsplash
What is a sermon?
Assuming for the sake of this reflection that we are considering only biblically faithful creedally orthodox sermons, what is this event we have in mind?
It is a kind of public address… But it is a particular kind of public speech whose value is not the degree to which it matches-up to other forms of public speech. After all, one can go and listen to more entertaining kinds of public address (like stand-up comedy)…
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p/c Chuus Fluus via unsplash
…The list goes on. Everywhere, it seems, on God’s green earth heroes, gods, angels, divine sages, are given haloes as a sign of their being hallowed…. There just seems to be something universal about being clothed in living flame…
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p/c Europeana via unsplash
I woke up later than intended from a dream
of finding at long last a building for our church
but being overlooked and out-bid at the end
by much a far greater offer made than the ask
by a local mid-size construction company…
It has become a tradition during the Trinity term of the Fellows Program at Theopolis to hold a feast in the style of a Georgian keipi. Food, served in courses, rounds of toasts orchestrated around specific themes (e.g. “eros” “death” “mothers” etc.), led by a tamada (kind of master of ceremonies meets hierophantic celebrant…
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p/c Chris Blair via unspalsh
My family is doing a read-aloud through C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader right now. We just completed the chapter in which Lucy enters the library of the magician Coriakin and reads through a portion of his book of spells.
The book is wondrous, it is alive. As one reads new words appear, the illustrations begin to move, smells and sounds begin to pour-forth from the pages… the book, in other words, comes alive…
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p/c Bhautik Patel via unsplash
In The Poetics Aristotle makes the claim that a good story —a really good story— must satisfy two conditions that seem mutually exclusive:
a good story must satisfy the hopes and anticipations which it cultivates in us.
AND a good story must surprise us; it cannot merely conclude or resolve; we can’t see it coming.
Think of the way we critique movies…
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Shakespeare notes the way in which “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose” (Merchant of Venice, I.3). This is what the Devil does when he tempts Jesus in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1-11; Mk. 1:12-13; Lk. 4:1-13). This is part of his much larger deceiving and perverting craft of simultaneously ruining good things and making evil things appear good. As Shakespeare again notes “O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
It is the devil who, for instance, makes a violation of God’s instructions for kings of Israel (a military census) appear like prudence and wise leadership…
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