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Monthly Archives: June 2009Throwing flowers at the Ego: finding the heart of religionRecently I was poking around on wordpress.com (the new home for the blogsite) and checking out other blogs about religion. The introduction to the ‘blogs about’ section on wordpress.com for ‘religion’ has the following statement of purpose:
Posted in existential musings, Jesus, kenosis, secular, theology
Tagged existential musings, Jesus, kenosis, theology
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the end of the Third Place Church model- On Ray Oldenburg’s dreamRay Oldenburg, the sociologist who famously coined the phrase “third places, or “great good places,” as being those public places on neutral ground where people can gather and interact. As Oldenburg notes in his book The Great Good Place, most people ocntinually move between three distinct places or zones of meaning-making: first places (home) and second places (work) dominate peoples concern and are mediated and at times sustained … There’s more to read here.
Posted in books, existential musings, pastoral vocation, secular, sociology, theology
Tagged pastoral vocation, ray oldenburg, theology
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Identity – On Derek Zoolander and finding our own ‘true’ faceIn the 2001 film Zoolander, Ben Stiller plays a male model Derek Zoolander who is capable of seemingly endless sharp focused facial poses – Blue Steel, Le Tigre, Magnum – that are ultimately the same face. It isnt like Ben Stiller to embrace the depth of Greek tragedy, but this alone captures the heart of ‘persona’ – the Greek notion of theatre where multiple ‘personas’ or masks are used … There’s more to read here.
Posted in existential musings, film, secular, theology
Tagged existential musings, film, theology, zoolander
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on being a pastor – Charles Taylor’s ‘A Secular Age’ as required reading for clergyOf the top five things that factor into my sense of ‘being’ is the strange reality that I am an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Even writing about it feels odd akin to discovering that you are actually adopted or better yet, that your entire life has actually been shaped and sustained by a force you least expected. Think of the great plot twist in Dickens’s Great Expectations… There’s more to read here.
Posted in books, charles taylor, existential musings, pastoral vocation, secular, theology
Tagged books, charles taylor, existential musings, pastoral vocation, theology
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Dynamic Incarnationalism- Žižek and the debate regarding materialism in theologyI am currently working on an article in response to Charles Taliaferro and Stewart Goertz’s article last year in Christian Scholars Review entitled “The Prospect of Christian Materialism” (volume XXXVII, number 3, Spring 2008) which is a chapter in a book I am completing entitled “The Kenotic Self”. In the article Taliaferro and Goertz assert that ‘most, if not all, orthodox Christian theologians of the early church were anthropological … There’s more to read here. the shadow across her face – morning/mourning lightYears ago we bought a painting by a young artist in Prague that now hangs in our living room. It was one of the first pieces of ‘real art’ that Diana and I purchased together and has symbolized a commitment to risk in many ways for our marriage: it was pricey and put us in financial vulnerability, we had to transport it back to the states via trains and planes, … There’s more to read here.
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on the construction of souls – the importance of patienceFor many recent graduates, the liminality of the time-between-times (think: waiting to find the job of your dreams, love of your life, place and community to call home) can be agonizing to say the least. I often tell students that God’s timing is always perfect, but never soon enough for us (frankly… I am telling myself that more than anyone!) Now that grading for Spring quarter is done I am … There’s more to read here.
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I love you more than Bono – musings on Fatherhood and celebrityMy daughter made one of the more engaging and stirring comments on a Father’s day this afternoon as we were listening to U2′s latest ”No Line on the Horizon” while I was making them lunch. ”Daddy” she said, “I love you more than Bono.” Now, I do think that the cards are stacked in my favor given that I have an all-access pass into her life while Bono has yet … There’s more to read here.
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rich mullins quote – moving toward salvation and away from morality“It’s just that for so many people that I know, Christianity’s this matter of … it has everything to do with morals. Christianity is a religion about morals. And they will even talk about Jesus. And they will say kids need to know about Jesus so they won’t smoke, drink, or dance, or go with girls that do, and all that kind of thing. And I kinda go, ‘That’s not … There’s more to read here. summer and the return to writing, or the Apollonian and Dionysian tension rises againone of the tide changes in an academic’s so-called life is the movement from spring term and into summer. While summer is often marked by many outside higher education as a season of sitting in on a porch, drinking iced tea while kids leap through sprinklers on the freshly cut lawn, the world actually becomes a Apollonian and Dionysian fist fight of sorts: the constant battle to delve ever deeper … There’s more to read here. |
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© 2011 Jeff Keuss |