On a God who wants

In her commentary on this quotation from Traherne's "Centuries of Meditations," Denis Inge writes: We are comfortable talking about God's will, his purposes or designs, but not God's desires. We want God to be reliable, unchanging and all-sufficient; Traherne's picture of God challenges this notion of divine "impassibility." In fact an impassible God is closer …

The Earth’s a Prison, and a Paradise

I am in a book club where we are reading from the 17th-century Anglican priest, theologian, and poet Thomas Traherne (1636-1674). This verse comes from Commentaries of Heaven, "All Things." I love how Traherne holds the paradoxical tension of Earth as a prison and a paradise, which depends upon whether our vision is obscured by sin or …

Literary pairings

If wine and food can be paired together for optimal degustation, then why not match literary works? The key to success is finding the inner logic. Below are some pairings. I will periodically add to this list. Leave a comment with your own suggested pairings. Seven Capital Vices (or Deadly Sins) Gluttony: Cormac McCarthy, The Road. …

Pairings of great literature and classical music

Whenever I read literature, I try to pair it with relevant music, which is either based on the literature or mentioned explicitly in it. If you have recommendations, please share them. Book of Job Orlande de Lassus, Lectiones Sacrae Novem, Ex Libris Hiob Excerptae (ca. 1582) Homer, The Iliad Jacques Offenbach, La belle Hélène Hector Berlioz, Les Troyens  Homer, The Odyssey …

The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood

In Lost in Transition (Oxford 2011), sociologist Christian Smith and his team offer a picture about the dark side of emerging adulthood based on the most accurate nationally-representative data, very strong research methodology, and good cross-sectional data of 18-23 year olds. On six macrosocial changes behind emerging adulthood: To get started, we need to understand what "emerging …

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

In Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford 2005), sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton analyze the results from the most ambitious national study ever conducted among American teenagers about their religious and spiritual lives. They ventured a general thesis about "the de facto dominant religion among contemporary U.S. teenagers," which they call …

Charles Mathewes on Christian sexual ethics

I am going to quote some content from the sixth chapter in Charles Mathewes' book, Understanding Religious Ethics (Wiley-Blackwell 2010), on sexuality because I appreciate the clarity of exposition and the provocation of thought. Mathewes is a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. On sex in general: Traditionally, the normative picture of the sexual act was defined …

Farewell Roger

Tonight I bid farewell to 41-year old Roger Federer, my favorite tennis player, in the last tennis match of his storied career at the 2022 Laver Cup in London. He is the most natural tennis player who has ever picked up a racket—elegant, formidable, graceful, transcendent. I am not sad that his career is over so …

Sufjan Stevens meets The Office

"Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven," according to St. James. "The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light" (James 1:17, The Message). This is a heavenly gift, pairing one of my favorite TV shows with one of my favorite musicians. Kudos to Josiah Renken for describing every album …

Major blocks today within our spiritual lives

In today's sermon, our priest quoted this passage from Catholic priest Ronald Rolheiser's book, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality: Among the many things that work against interiority today, three can be singled out as particularly cankerous: narcissism, pragmatism, and unbridled restlessness.  Defined simply, narcissism means excessive self-preoccupation; pragmatism means excessive focus on work, achievement, and …