Tag: identity
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“The Artist’s Family”
hopefully we can see ourselves for who and what we are – works of art, made by a gracious, divine artist
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Reflecting on Deuteronomy 8 1-11
In Deuteronomy 8:10, Moses (the speaker) tells the assembled Israelites that “you will eat your fill and you will bless the HOLY ONE your God for the good land he has given you.” Given the context, it may actually be a little less like a prediction, and a little more like Mom saying to our…
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Think of it as a Learning Experience
Steele, Claude M. Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do. W.W. Norton, 2010. [An installment of the “Read Me” Project.] This is not a book about race in the United States. And yet, it is not not a book about race in the United States, either. The concepts the author explores…
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Questions for Reflection and Discussion – James 4 1-10
We of the Not-That-Early Sunday school class, along with lots of others, are studying James 4:1-10 for Sunday, January 13 – a text that points us to the roots of conflicts and that contrasts two kinds of friendship: friendship with God and friendship with “the world” – with the clear implication that friendship with God…
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Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
[A sermon on Acts 8:26-40, the Uniform Series text for Sunday, August 13, 2017.] What in the world are we supposed to make of this story? This peculiar story about a meeting, as it turns out, an appointment, arranged by the Holy Spirit no less, so that from one side at least it looks for…
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Cultural Symbolism, or Baking at Christmas
I have done some baking this Christmas, for the first time in at least a decade. I’m not entirely sure why I stopped baking at Christmas; it was probably some combination of busy-ness and overwhelm and the idea that we don’t need all that sugar around anyway and resistance and avoidance and the “complex system…
Matters of Interpretation 