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Archive for December, 2007

prosperity’s idols: Hosea 7–10

Posted in textures, tagged , , on December 11, 2007| Leave a Comment »

At the intersection of faith and culture, the greatest miscalculations occur when foolish minds equate prosperity with blessing. (more…)

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the healing wound: Hosea 5–6

Posted in textures, tagged , , on December 11, 2007| Leave a Comment »

It is a good thing to find oneself in the care of a gifted physician. It is an oddly redemptive experience to know him also as one’s assailant.

This is the logic that is brought to bear by the Old Testament prophet Hosea, who finds promise in urging Israel to return to its convenantal Punisher in order to avail itself of his medicinal prowess:

Come, let us return to the LORD;
for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us;
he has struck down, and he will bind us up.

(more…)

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Jays in flocks

Posted in my hometown, tagged , on December 11, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Something has changed.

We used to have a few Blue Jays around here and from time to time they’d stop by to cherry-pick the peanuts in the shell that I put out in a feeder made for just that.

Now, the Jay Tribe seems to have posted a sentry. Within seconds or minutes of refilling the feeder, I hear the signature piercing call of a Jay and soon a bevy of them has showed up in their blue suits for a feeding frenzy that easily clears out the feeder in thirty minutes.

It’s pretty spectacular.

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swinging the world: Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Raising Sand

Posted in reseña, tagged , , , on December 8, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my rating of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Good grief, the monster stole the maiden and there’s no time left in the movie for rescuing maidens!

But listen to the music they make … (more…)

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the Johannine synthesis: 3 John

Posted in textures, tagged , , , on December 8, 2007| Leave a Comment »

By the time the writer gets to his exquisitely synthetic declaration, the Johannine tradition has already provided a reference point in the shadow of which mean dualisms fade:

Beloved, do not imitate what is evil but imitate what is good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God.

The ‘Johannine community’ is a hypothetical entity that serves a deliciously heuristic role in the interpretation of the corresponding literature, even in those moments when nobody is quite sure what it is. One need not be skeptical about speculation so long as it knows its own mood. Probing for the legacy of John in a historical human community is no idle task and was carried out with particular élan by, say, the late Raymond Brown, S.S. (more…)

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perfect love: 1 John 4

Posted in textures, tagged , , , on December 5, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Only rarely does human language capture such a rich swath of reality in a short declaration as here:

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.

Human experience could almost be considered a fleshing out of this fundamental dogma. (more…)

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music for brain surgeons: Ravel: Boléro / Ma Mère L’Oye (complete ballet) / Rapsodie espagnole / Une Barque sur l’océan / Alborada del Gracioso – Berliner Philharmoniker / Pierre Boulez

Posted in reseña, tagged , , , , on December 2, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my rating of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

I remember reading years ago of some brain surgeons–maybe they were cardiac surgeons, the important thing is that they knew–who customarily piped Maurice Ravel’s Boléro into the operating room for the calming effect of its rhythmic regularity. (more…)

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there’s been a change: The Queen (DVD)

Posted in reseña, tagged , , on December 2, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my rating of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Few books or films about a living monarch can avoid caricature. Royalty as a fact on the ground runs so contrary to the spirit of modernity—yet there they are!—and still holds such sentimental power for many ‘subjects’. The result is the virtual impossibility of a civil discussion about gradated pros and cons. (more…)

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