Surprised by Grace Now and then, I am surprised by grace; that phrase is used a lot by Christian writers weakly attempting to convey what Paul describes as living and active and sharper than a two edged sword and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit. Because it’s always much more than surprise…more […]
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CS Lewis and Karl Rahner Most likely they never met. But the atheist turned Anglican Christian CS Lewis and the Roman Catholic Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner perceived their God in radically similar ways. Both men served as apologists for their faith causing more than a little consternation in the minds of more rule bound colleagues.
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Environmental Activist and Oxymoron There was a time, many years ago, when I was more of a radical environmental activist than most people I knew. And would not have conceived of a phrase like environmental activist and oxymoron in a single phrase. No more. The first part of the phrase carries the heft of religion.
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John Chillingworth/Picture Post/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images The Great Divorce: A Reread …the bus was full oflight. It was cruel light. I shrank from the faces and forms by which I was surrounded. They wereall fixed faces, full not of possibilities but of impossibilities, some gaunt, some bloated, someglaring with idiotic ferocity, some drowned beyond
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We Do What We Can: Or Do We? These words sound weak: “we do what we can” in this culture of superlatives where someone is not just good but “amazing”, where a movie is not merely excellent but “awesome.” Recently, I spoke with a long time friend about why the phrase, “we do what we
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Your life is worth dying for… Exactly what are we worth? We usually think about our worth in dollars and cents. In terms of salaries, bonuses and raises. Each of us asks the question at least once, probably several times during the different phases of our lives: From the beginning of our careers and the
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Writing: a surprisingly effective antidote to stress? How can that be true? Seems to the casual observer that spending days, sometimes months studying opaque topics like epigenetics, or court cases about physicians wrongfully convicted of murder or former combat marines wrongfully convicted of raping a child would cause stress, not relieve it…and not just the
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Revisiting the Three Rules for Writing A Novel As I close in the completion of my latest book, I, Claudia, I am revisiting the three rules for writing a novel. “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” Somerset Maugham Recently I was interviewed by a writing blogger
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Our rule of law and its slippery slope Most of us believe that our rule of law is sacred and that passing laws will fix recurring problems, address unwanted behavior, even establish a universal moral code. Examples of relatively recent legislative activity are texting while driving and sexual harassment. Note the wide definitional range between these
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“Forgiveness is the only thing that is new in the world, the one sure sign that there is a God.” One sure sign that there is a God: To some, those are words that can evoke a number of questions, confusion or even incomprehension. Reverend Ron Rolheiser wrote them in an article about Sister Helen Prejean’s
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