“What is naming?” Walker Percy asks. “Is it an event which we can study as we study other events in natural history, such as solar eclipses, glandular secretions, nuclear fusion, stimulus-response sequences?”
Read moreOn being called by a name, part 1
“Hey you, weirdo!” A stranger hails me.
“My name’s Mark., and don’t call me ‘weirdo’.” I say in response, trying to reclaim my own autonomy. I choose what I am called. I am the namer of me, not this stranger. If I give him the power to name me, to hail me thus, I feel like I forfeit some power. By calling me this way, he enacts a superior position.
Read moreSt Bernard on the kiss
For Bernard the longing of the Christian year at Advent was best expressed in this cry of lovesickness. As we wait for his return, the song of the Bride becomes the song of the church in waiting. “Maranatha, come Lord Jesus!” (1 Cor. 16:22; Rev. 22:20).
Read moreThe beheading of John the Baptist
It is Caravaggio’s greatest work: The Beheading of St. John the Baptist.
Read moreImbalances of power between friends
Christ calls his disciples “friends” and astounds them, for the power relations are steep (Jn. 15:14).
Read moreOne loaf, one cup
When we board a plane we become partakers in a community, a civitas, a polity. We become a kind of loaf. We are bound together, even if only for a time, for better or for worse. We communally share in the crying children, the grouches in row ##, the rolling of the cart down the aisle, the inclement weather.
Read moreCostly and joyful boldness
We live in a culture that imagines itself very parrhesia-ful, very proud and bold. And yet, we aren’t. All of our ostensible boldness and loud proclamation is a kind of veil drawn across the surface of an ever-deepening state of shame and panic. Foucault regards parrhesia as costly speech, a truthfulness that risks the life of the speaker. Contemporary American rhetoric is not parrhesia, for we want the costly speech but not the actual paying of the cost. We like the feeling of speaking truth to Power, but then are surprised when those in power prove just how powerful they are.
Read moreDiffering stories of human development
They are “so close” because, really and truly, resurrected humanity shall be clothed in glory (2 Cor. 5.1-5; cf. Rom 8.18-25) and move from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3.18); we shall be clothed in immortality (1 Cor. 15.50-55), shall draw food from the Tree of Life (Rev. 2.7), and rule over angels (1 Cor. 6.3)?
Read moreOn Scripture, a sermon follow-up
When people ask us, “What is the Bible?” we can give them a lot of answers and cite a lot of self-referential passages wherein the Scriptures speak about the Scriptures (e.g. 2 Tim. 3:16). But often that question, “what is the Bible"?”, is asking for more than a simple description. Folks who ask “what is the Bible?” are often asking for more than a single-sentence definition. Without denying the artful simplicity of simple descriptions and definitions, here are some a few more expansive reflections on “what is the Bible?”
Read moreWaiting and resting: notes on Genesis 8
What is Noah waiting for?
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