A genealogy like the extensive one that occupies the opening chapters of the Books of Chronicles is a black hole of tribal memory. Like those astronomical oddities, the recitation of the carefully archived names evokes an incalculably dense matrix of human experience. There are hundreds of them. Each lived, loved, ached, rejoiced, ate, defecated, hoped, [...]
Archive for May, 2008
tracing roots: 1 Chronicles 6-7 // John 8
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Chronicles, textures on May 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
mucha alma: Gloria Estefan, Alma Caribeña
Posted in reseña, tagged Gloria Estefan, music, reseña on May 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Sometimes an artist with formidable cross-genre credits returns to her roots, as much for her own soul’s sake as to mine a promising market. The results are often mixed, for spanning multiple blocks of fans is more than just a technical feat. As often enough, the broadening loosens the soil that surrounds the roots. To [...]
Mr. Physicist, meet Mr. Novelist … : Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams
Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged Alan Lightman on May 18, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Rarely does a Cal Tech-trained physicist become an accomplished contributor to literary magazines like the incomparable Atlantic Monthly. Even rarer still, this one tosses off a thin little collection of whimsical reflections on the world’s most famous theoretical physicist in early last-century Bern and it becomes a best seller. As it should.
filial liquid: John 18
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, John, textures on May 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
A handful of well-received twentieth-century writers were particularly adept at probing the deep structure of reality and the meaningful juxtaposition of suffering and redemption that resides there. J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis come to mind. These men spun tales nourished by the notion that deep suffering lodges itself in the anteroom to liberation and even [...]
remind me how today felt
Posted in my hometown, paterfamilias, tagged fauna on May 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Remind me five weeks from now, when the frenzy has engulfed me again and I’m in a hotel room on some two-week business itinerary, waking up and taking five minutes to remember where I am, how good today felt. It has been so long since a Saturday at home came down like this one. Sleeping [...]
love and the name: John 17
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, John, textures on May 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
There was a time in the circles of my youth when too much talk of love with regard to ‘the things of God’ was taken as the surest sign that one had ‘gone liberal’. This is a deep shame. To be sure, people who express themselves in this way have seldom set out to pursue [...]
an oddly joyous historiography: 2 Chronicles 19-22
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Chronicles, textures on May 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
It is these days considered a naive question to read ancient documents and ask ‘what really happened’. We are instructed that ‘actual events’ are inaccessible behind the interpretive curtain that necessarily separates all tellers of tales from the space-and-time events they describe. Further, what are ‘space-and-time’ events, and does it even make sense to speak [...]
a poignant departure: John 15-16
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, John, textures on May 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Jesus’ grief-stricken followers cannot imagine life without him. So absorbed are they in their loss that they fail even the courtesy of asking him how he is negotiating these turbulent waters. Yet Jesus is convinced that the Advocate (traditionally, Paraklete) will more than compensate for the kind of ‘absence’ that he foresee: But because I [...]
the difference a prefix makes: John 14
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, John, textures on May 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Jesus’ agricultural metaphors are both vivid and harsh. A vineyard keeper doesn’t wince at every stroke of his knife. He does not sentimentalize his vines, else he’d make little wine. I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears [...]
what kind of flame? Steven Curtis Chapman, Declaration
Posted in reseña, tagged music, reseña, Steven Curtis Chapman on May 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
An album of the caliber of Steven Curtis Chapman’s Declaration worms its way deeper into an appreciative listener’s soul with every new pass-through. Its appeal is multi-layered. Each new encounter with this kind of music reveals a new facet, a previously unheard sound, the pleasure of an allusive turn of phrase that had gone undetected. [...]
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