What is wrong with their (and our) heads? Why do truth and reason not persuade us?
Category Archives: Faith and life
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”
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 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.
My mouth filled with blessing: Psalm 34 as rule of life
What would it mean to take the first three verses of Psalm 34 as an individual and communal rule of life?
When Jesus went on his way, where did he go? (Luke 4:31–37)
Jesus will never be our homey who assures us that we are OK until we first hear him as the stranger who tells us that we are not OK, until we accept his exotic words as authoritative, as so authoritative and powerful that they cast out the demons that indwell us (verses 33–37), until we have been unmade and remade by his word.
All and every, for ever and ever (Psalm 145)
Have you ever noticed how many times Psalm 145 uses the words ALL and EVERY? (They translate the same Hebrew word, KOL.) I am lowercasing LORD below to let all the KOLs stand out. We could also note three occurrences of L’OLAM VA-ED, FOR EVER AND EVER; these I have italicized. I will extol thee,Continue reading “All and every, for ever and ever (Psalm 145)”
By the waters of New Zion (Psalm 137, nationalized)
By the waters of New Zion, here we dance and sing! We have long since retuned our lyres to the tonal system of this blessed land. Our leaders smile on us and swear that we are chosen of the Lord and precious in his sight so we say they are too. Our tongues flap freelyContinue reading “By the waters of New Zion (Psalm 137, nationalized)”
Verba Sparsa 