A Thinking Reed

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

Spirituality

  • The marginalization of the mystical

    Luke Timothy Johnson writes on keeping the “exoteric” (legal, moral, ritual) and “esoteric” (mystical, devotional) aspects of religion together. Both, he says, are necessary for the religious life to flourish, but western monotheisms–Islam and Christianity particularly–have become too focused on the exoteric. Read more

  • Prayer for a squirrel

    Christopher has a terrific piece up at Episcopal Cafe on how prayer can and does connect us with our fellow creatures: …to bless God for the life of just one animal, who has been a friend and companion, begins to have us think anew about our fellow creatures, about creation, about ourselves, about God. Such Read more

  • An outing to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

    We had absolutely gorgeous weather here today, so my beloved wife and I decided to take a trip up to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on the campus of Catholic University and reputedly the largest Catholic Church in North America. The church is a Byzantine-Romanesque hybrid style with many side Read more

  • Debating Celtic Christianity

    There’s a lively conversation going on downblog on the “Use and abuse of Celtic Christianity” post from a few weeks back. Welcome to any new readers! I don’t have much to contribute to the discussion at this point, but I’m happy to see it keep going. Read more

  • This is your brain on God

    Marvin hits the nail on the head here: just because an experience can be artificially reproduced doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine or veridical when it occurs under other circumstances. Why would we expect that religious or mystical experiences, if genuine, would bypass the brain anyway? In fact, why would we even think that’s possible? Read more

  • The ecological promise of an orthodox theology

    I was flipping through H. Paul Santmire’s excellent book Nature Reborn: The Ecological and Cosmic Promise of Christian Theology, and discovered that he takes Matthew Fox’s (no, not that one) “creation spirituality” to task on many of the same grounds that I criticized J. Philip Newell. Like Newell, Fox embraces a form of nature mysticism, Read more

  • “Truly this man was God’s son!”: A meditation on the centurion’s confession

    Here’s the text of a meditation I gave at a mid-week Lenten service at our church. We were instructed to select a piece of art depicting a scene from the last week of Jesus’ life according to Mark’s gospel. I selected the confession of the centurion at the foot of the cross and used a Read more

  • Lent — always beginning again

    I hope everyone’s enjoying their Fat Tuesday. I plan on “feasting” on a bowl of pasta in a cream tomato sauce with roasted cauliflower on the side and watching some Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs. Lent is upon us again and what’s struck me this year, as in years past, is just how crappy I Read more

  • Return of a blogger

    I’m happy to see that Andy of Sinning Boldly has returned to blogging after a lengthy hiatus. Right now is looks like his focus is a little more on the devotional/spiritual side of things. Welcome back, Andy! 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