Verba Sparsa
How to know if you are a demon (Luke 8:26–39)
It can be hard to knowif you are a demon butyou can watch for telltale signs. If the person you inhabitwears no clothes but goes aboutfully exposed—each body partor even more embarrassinglyevery soul and spirit partplainly visible to all around,unseen only by himself—then you might be a demon. And if the person you inhabithas noContinue reading “How to know if you are a demon (Luke 8:26–39)”
Why doesn’t reasoning (with people) work?
What is wrong with their (and our) heads? Why do truth and reason not persuade us?
Gestalt shift: Jesus and the woman in Simon’s house
Isn’t it funny how you can look at something, and look at it, and look at it, and see the same thing, and then again look at it and see something completely different? I guess we’ve all stared at drawings like Wittgenstein’s duck/rabbit, or the old woman/young maiden drawing, or the one that at oneContinue reading “Gestalt shift: Jesus and the woman in Simon’s house”
This is my story, this is my song: the story we enter when praying Psalms 95–97
In the book of Psalms, the entries in the 90s are grand, profound, and glorious. Is this because the reader who enters into them gets grand and glorious feelings, or because the aesthetic quality of their poesy is high, or because they refer to realities that are objectively awesome? (And I realize that “objectively awesome”Continue reading “This is my story, this is my song: the story we enter when praying Psalms 95–97”
For better or for worse, faith comes by hearing (thoughts on the silencing of a malignant voice)
The silencing of a voice that poisoned our nation and our churches reminds us that “faith comes by hearing” not only when we are listening to the word of Christ but also when we are listening to a different voice.
A thousand days elsewhere: reading Psalm 84 on Ash Wednesday 2021
We have been living the Thousand Days Elsewhere, but even now The Presence is available. Let us journey toward joy together.
How to ruin the perfect prayer (Psalm 63)
Why should we let the Psalms—or our own prayers—be ruined by the inclusion of unworthy emotions and desires?
Follow the bulls: part 2, the return of the bulls (Psalm 51)
This is the only possible solution to the problem of failure in self-knowledge, the problem of the locked room of delusion and self-deception: to be known by The Other, to invite and open oneself to the knowledge that only The Other has, but which The Other has offered to share.
Fearing and not fearing (Psalm 56)
Fear is a fearful thing. It can cause blindness. It can undermine our rationality. It can make us shoot our wife or betray our country. It can be both a symptom and a cause of unfaithfulness to our God.
Follow the bulls: part 1, the banishment of the bulls (Psalm 50)
Psalm 50 is a psalm of judgment. When God’s people fall in with thieves and adulterers, God rejects their sacrifices.
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