Tag Archives: Lent
Lenten music: Bonhoeffer, Dead Poet’s Society and the gift of being an alternative song
I wanted to share a portion of a letter from Dietrich Bonhoeffer written to his friend Eberhard Bethge while Bonhoeffer was in prison. Taproot Theatre is currently showing a marvelous dramatization of Bonhoeffer’s last days called “The Beams are Creaking” and it led me to re-read his Letters and Papers from Prison. Given that I just finished a book on pop music and that I think most naturally in … There’s more to read here.
Lenten release: (just about) everything I learned about Lent I learned from U2
As I discuss in the opening chapter of my 2010 book Freedom of the Self, popular music since the late 1960’s has been replete with claims of what it means to have identity in the world. Whether our sense of identity is bound up in the longing for love, the loss of our past, or the social injustice that removes people from seeing their true beauty and worth, popular … There’s more to read here.
Lenten losses: Philippians 2, George Bailey, and finding the “Wonderful Life”
I have had a week of world-weariness and I suppose I am not alone in this. Our government can’t seem to balance the budget, wars continue to wage around the globe, poverty and sickness takes the body, soul and spirit of thousands upon thousands of people who are created in the Imago Dei.
It gets simply tiring, doesn’t it?
In Lent we find a season that acknowledges that to be weary … There’s more to read here.
Lenten light amidst darkness: John 9, Pablo Neruda, and Pleasantville
The Lectionary has set John 9 as the appointed text to be read this week. This is a fascinating encounter of Jesus with a man who is born blind and one of the longest passages in the New Testament where Jesus is completely absent – over 20 verses in the chapter has Jesus no where to be found. It is a chapter that deals with one of the oldest metaphors … There’s more to read here.
Lenten closeness: Psalm 51, Georgia O’Keefe, and considering lilies up close
One of American artist Georgia O’Keefe’s most famous paintings posted below is entitled “Black Cross.”
Painted in the New Mexico desert in 1929, O’Keefe draws us into this image of a dark cross set against the dusk of a New Mexico desert and pulls us close – very close – not to the scenery that surrounds, but the very thing that both blocks out and centers our vision. She makes … There’s more to read here.
Lent and the hermeneutic circle: Ricoeur, Heidegger and St. Patrick on being real in the now
We live in the real world. This may come as a shock to some, but it remains a truth that needs to be reflected on. As we engage ever more in the virtuality of our age – becoming more and more what MIT researcher Sherry Turkle in her recent book “Alone Together” has called ‘tethered selves’: those who are so bound to our smartphones, iPads, and big screen televisions … There’s more to read here.
Lenten practices: Spring training for the soul from St. Ignatius, Dallas Willard and Richard Foster
With this being the first week of spring, the reality of the change is seasons is palpable. The weather in the Seattle area is slowly warming up, daffodils are announcing themselves once again as the first of the blubs to awaken from the winter slumber, and NCAA ‘march maddness’ coupled with baseball’s spring training means that we have left football behind for another year.
Spring is also a transition in the … There’s more to read here.
CCM as Lenten practice: Finding Larry Norman in the desert
Lent is a season of justice – it is a season of deep reconciliation, of bare bones truth-telling, a redirecting of hungers and longings that have gone astray, but it is essentially a season of justice. As I will tell students as we enter Ash Wednesday that they are called to remember along with Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:19 that they too will “return to the ground from which they … There’s more to read here.
