A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Saints

  • Companions on the way

    I meant to link earlier to Jeremy’s helpful post on Elizabeth Johnson’s book on the saints, Friends of God and Prophets. Johnson argues for a reformed, “companion” model of the communion of saints, as contrasted with the more traditional “patronage” model. According to Johnson (per Jeremy’s summary; I haven’t read the book), just this kind Read more

  • Pre-Christmas odds and ends

    The ATR household is off to visit family for the better part of the next week, so blogging will be light–well, even lighter than usual. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve been reading ’round the Web lately: Christopher has several posts on l’affaire Rick Warren that are, as usual, very much worth your time. (See Read more

  • Blogs of Christmas past

    Since content will likely be light this coming week, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to offer up some representative posts from the previous four Decembers since I started blogging, as a kind of retrospective. (Note: some of these originally appeared on my first blog, “Verbum Ipsum,” but have been imported to WP; Read more

  • Disappearing act

    Apparently there was some controversy about the remains of John Henry Newman. The Catholic Church wanted to exhume the remains of the soon-to-be-sainted cardinal (and famous convert from Anglicanism) and display them for veneration. But Newman had explicitly requested burial next to his longtime friend Father Ambrose St John, which is further complicated by the Read more

  • “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You”: St. Augustine

    Today is St. Augustine’s feast day. He remains one of the most influential, as well as controversial, figures in the history of Christianity. Some blame him for all that’s wrong with “Western” Christianity: its alleged obsession with sin, legalism, hangups about sex, the frightful predestinarian picture of God, etc. Some of these charges are caricatures, Read more

  • Doubt and atheism aren’t the same thing

    Thomas has an excellent riposte to some of the truly insipid things being said about Mother Teresa in light of some recently publicized letters that make it clear that she (like many, many other saints) struggled with doubt and a feeling of God’s absence. Of course, this won’t be news to anyone who read Carol Read more

  • Our fellow travelers

    Calvinist Richard Mouw reflects on our communion with the saints. Read more

  • A Marian witness

    As today is the (transferred) Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lord, I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts on the talk given by Bishop Steven Charleston on Marian devotion at our parish adult education forum yesterday. First of all, Bp. Charleston seemed like a really interesting person. He’s a Choctaw Indian who was Read more

  • Saintly miscellania

    I don’t think that I linked to LutherPunk’s good discussion of invoking the saints. Here it is. Also, coinciding with the Feast of the Assumption Annunciation (duh!), Steven Charleston, former bishop of Alaska and Dean and President of the Episcopal Divinity School, is going to be speaking at our parish’s adult education forum this Sunday Read more