Marginal Christianity

 http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8024463059512837285#editor/target=post;postID=8072017826548708226 "Advent is all about desire," an elderly Jesuit in our community used to say every year as November drew to a close. And whenever he said it, I would say, "Huh?" But gradually it dawned on me. Christians who celebrate Advent, the liturgical season that precedes Christmas, desire the coming of Christ into their lives in new ways. The beautiful readings from the Book of Isaiah, which we hear during Advent, describe how even the earth longs for the presence of God. The wonderful "O antiphons," sung at evening prayer and during the Gospel acclamations toward the end of Advent, speak of Christ at the "King of Nations and their Desire." The Gospel readings for the season tell of John the Baptist expressing Israel's hope for a Messiah. Mary and Joseph look forward to the upcoming birth of a son. My friend was right. It...

                One way I like to think about humanity is that we are a cord of three strands:   priorities, passions, and practices.   Our priorities are our deepest convictions about the good, the right, and the beautiful.   Passions are the energies that drive us to act.   Practices are what we in fact do.   As Christians the gospel of Jesus Christ is the source and goal of these three “p’s.”           Advent is one of the two times in the church year especially designed for reflective examination of our life in light of the gospel.   In the Bible “heart” is what NASA would call the “Command Center” of the person.   Intellect, emotion, and will collaborate to integrate and choreograph a life of integrity and coherence.   Unfortunately, we often find our Command Center dysfunctional with each of its three elements pu...

November 27, 2012 By Timothy Dalrymple   http://www.patheos.com/blogs/philosophicalfragments/2012/11/27/sex-god-and-politics/   Is sex more satisfying for conservative women?  Or are liberal women just making an idol out of sex? The always-stimulating (no pun intended) Mark Regnerus , a Patheos blogger and one of the most significant sociologists of religion practicing the craft today (and Mark is a gadfly in the most salutary sense, but far more controversial than he should be), points to a very interesting correlation between political liberalism amongst women and the desire for more sex. The New Family Structures Study asked respondents, “Are you satisfied with the amount of sex you’re having?”  As Regnerus reports, women of all political persuasions report roughly the same frequency of sex — so, before you leap to conclusions, conservative women are not “frigid” or sexually unsatisfied.  Indeed, they might be more.  18-39 year...

4. Beginning at the End           Let’s remember as we make our way through TH that even though it is a prequel of sorts for TLOR , the latter took on a life of its own that distanced it somewhat from TH .   For instance, the ring of invisibility Bilbo finds and uses in TH is not yet the One Ring of Power that becomes the focal point of TLOR .   And Sauron, the Dark Lord of the trilogy, is known only as the Necromancer in TH and is little more than a literary device to enable Gandalf’s movements in the story.   These two staples of the latter work play small roles in TH .   This should alert us that in this prequel Tolkien is doing something different than he does in the trilogy and that we should adjust our reading expectations accordingly.           Oddly enough, we will begin at the end.           TH concludes so...

                         "A Grinch, A Witch, and the Liberation of Christmas                                      (Luke 1:26-38) I hold in my hands the essential tools for liberating Christmas from its captivity to North American capitalistic, consumeristic culture. The Dr. Seuss tale How the Grinch Stole Christmas ; C. S. Lewis's Narnia story, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe ; the “Christian Seasons Calendar”; and the Bible. In U. S. News & World Report a few years ago, Jeffrey Sheler surveyed what he called "the battle for Christmas." His thesis was: from the time when Christians began celebrating Christ's birth (which surprisingly seems not to be until the fourth century when the Roman ...