A Thinking Reed

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

Spirituality

  • 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

  • Compassionate eating as Christian discipleship

    Here’s a good lecture on our relationship to animals from a Christian perspective by Matthew Halteman, a Calvin College philosopher. He also contributes to a blog on these themes here. Prof. Halteman conceptualizes “compassionate eating” as a Christian discipline, which he defines as a repetitive daily practice undertaken to narrow the gap between who we Read more

  • Jenson on Mary as the “container of the uncontainable”

    In the essay I referred to briefly yesterday (“A Space for God,” found in Mary: Mother of God, Braaten & Jenson, eds.) Robert Jenson asks why it’s important or significant to ask for Mary’s prayers specifically as Theotokos or Mater Dei rather than simply as “Saint Mary.” His intriguing response is that Mary in some Read more

  • So great a cloud of witnesses

    Chris, the Lutheran Zephyr, is wrestling with the question of asking the saints to pray for us. For me this falls under the category of “all may, none must.” I can see why some are uncomfortable with it, and I wouldn’t presume to judge someone else’s piety. The argument that it’s permissible is, I think, Read more

  • Lent for nerds or The desire to possess as alienation from God

    Part of my Lenten fast is that I’m not going to buy any books. This may sound silly, but I’ve found that I often crave books in the way that other people might crave a new pair of shoes or something for their house. Although I (eventually!) read most of the books I buy, I Read more