It is a gift to be able to create. As human beings, we have been given the ability to imitate our Creator by exercising and developing our creativity. God creates from the beginning, bringing out of what is formless and void, giving it design, structure, function, and purpose. We create out of what God has made and entrusted to us, ordering our little worlds after the order, or logos, by which He made the heavens and the earth.
Read MoreWhen I was eighteen, my home life and family of origin underwent a sudden change from which it never really recovered. I still remember the lurch of what I thought was permanent and untouchable suddenly shifting under my feet. Like Lewis, I felt afraid. I felt cut off, even when surrounded by people. I felt deaf to the words they were trying to say to make me feel better, and even when their words got through, part of me still wanted their kind words to just go away. Yet I was terrified of being alone. Starting to sound familiar?
Read MoreWe have considered what it means to make our artistic vocations, as Evelyn Underhill puts it, “an oblation from the first.” As we consider how to do this in our own lives, I want to put the example of a specific artist before you.
Read MoreWe’ve considered the necessity of self-death through Christ in the life of the Christian artist. What’s next? What is the point of this self-death? Where does it go? Does my story, my particular identity, matter at all in my artistic practice?
Read MoreIn the first verses of Isaiah 40, God declares, “Comfort, yes, comfort My people! … Speak comfort to Jerusalem.” These first verses frame the chapter to follow as an extended meditation on comfort as God understands and offers it to his people.
Read MoreThe Rosary is a longtime church tradition. It began in the 9th century in various forms, until it was revealed to St. Dominic in 1221 A.D. by Mother Mary herself. From then on, through his religious order of the Dominicans, the Rosary was promoted and encouraged for all Christians.
Read MoreIn the past, I’ve written that healthy shame will turn toxic unless acted upon and held in health by a power beyond itself. Individuals and communities–including churches–will repeat cycles of toxic shame until someone intervenes. I have seen in pastoral conversations many attempts to ‘manage’ the voice of shame by negating it. We do this either through ignoring it or by trying to persuade ourselves that shame can tell us nothing and is merely a figment of a general atmospheric moralism. But no matter how boldly we shout I am not ashamed! we still are.
Read MoreSince last year, Timothy Lawrence and I adopted the tradition to read and discuss Dante’s Divine Comedy throughout the Lenten fast. This reading course was outlined by Fr. Hayden a few years prior for his students at Pacifica. As if enduring the silence and temptations of Lent are not enough, adding a medieval poetry epic about the 9 circles of hell, 7 levels of purgatory, and 9 spheres of heaven to that is a good penance. During the first few chapters, there is an emphasis on losing the way. As I mentioned in last week’s blog, Lent reveals much about ourselves. Our fears. Our worries. Our anxiety.
Read MoreIt sometimes surprises new practitioners of Lenten disciplines when they do the math and find that there are not forty but forty-six days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. How do we account for the additional days? It is then that they learn of Sunday as a blessed relaxation of the Fast in observance of our weekly remembrance of the Lord’s Day of Resurrection. The Lenten Sunday puts a point on what is true of every Sunday: it is both a looking back and a looking forward. It is a perpetual memorial of Easter until Christ returns to raise and judge the quick and the dead.
Read More“In December 2016, I watched one of the most emotionally intense and scarring movies of my life on the big screen that had me questioning parts of my faith. This movie was Silence, written and directed by Martin Scorsese. Based on the novel by Shusaku Endo, Silence follows two Jesuit Priests, Fr. Rodrigues, and Fr. Garupe, leaving their home in Portugal to bring the Gospel to Japan and to discover the whereabouts of a well-known Priest who committed apostasy. Throughout the film, the themes of silence, despair, and hope appear and reappear. The scene that never left my mind was one during one of Fr. Rodrigues’ prayers.”
Read MoreLike all real and good things that take practice, prayer doesn’t always come easily. In fact, as we grow in prayer, we can expect to have seasons where it is downright difficult to pray. There are a lot of reasons for this. When the newness of a habit begins to wear off and we settle into a pattern, we begin to experience new challenges to our disciplines of prayer. It is important for us to remember that difficulties in prayer are not necessarily a sign we are doing something wrong. In fact, experiencing difficulty in prayer can be a sign that we are doing exactly what we need to do. Here are some of the common difficulties that face a person who is learning to pray:
Read MoreWe have faced the blank page. We have attended to silence. And we have accomplished an incredibly brave thing: we have gotten something on the page. It is not blank anymore—we are free to keep working toward a finished piece, whatever that might be, however many drafts it may take us to get there. We have committed to the creative act, and to whatever it may show us as we follow it through.
Read MoreWe have practiced silence. We have listened for the voice of the Spirit. We have put pen to paper, brush to canvas, spade to soil, knitting needles to yarn. Now what?
Read MoreIn the next three blog posts, we will consider what I call “the creative act.” Before we dive in, let’s ask a question that may seem obvious: What is the creative act?
Read MoreOne of the gifts of good liturgy is that we do not have to question it every time we approach it. Good liturgy is elegant, challenging, and familiar; it draws us out of ourselves without fear of harm. From time to time, however, it is good to ask why we do what we do in order that we might remember that there are reasons for what we do, that we are able to articulate those reasons, and so that the faithful might have greater confidence in the soundness of the liturgy and thus more willing to submit themselves to it.
Read MoreIn this series of posts, we will consider the vice of ‘sloth,’ one of the more misunderstood among the vices. Before we focus on this vice in particular, though, we do well to look at what place the categories of the ‘seven (or eight) deadly (or capital) vices’ have in the Christian life. These are not a list found in the Scriptures–they do not have the same evident clarity as the Ten Commandments, the Summary of the Law, or the Beatitudes. Nevertheless, this list emerged immediately after the great persecutions ended and Christians began to have time and space (and longevity) to study and explain methodically the spiritual work of the Christian life.
Read MoreThe collect for the 10th Sunday after Trinity makes a curious request. After asking God to keep His ears open to our prayers, it asks Him to exercise His power over those very prayers: “. . . and, that [thy humble servants] may obtain their petitions, make them to ask such things as shall please thee.”
Read MoreWe began by defining tradition in its broadest sense as “giving over” and discussed some of the ways Christians understand what it means to pass down the practice of the Faith through the generations. We also explored how Anglican Catholics have a unique sense of obligation to the past and to those giants of the Faith on whose shoulders we now stand. A high view of tradition is an expression of gratitude for what has been preserved through great trials, recognizing that many have suffered to remain faithful to the Lord as they encountered Him in the Church’s prayer, and for whom they endured unimaginable persecution. They understood that the Faith was a gift, one to be received and then given in turn within a view of the Church that was bigger than themselves but of which they were a vital part. It is to that volta between reception and gift in tradition that I would like to turn our attention in this essay.
Read MoreThere is a sweet sense of reunion that attends me when I look at the first, blank page of a new piece of writing. There, I am confronted with the fact that I never immediately know what I should write. It is a lonely feeling that, I think, ought always to attend the attempt to do something novel, and particularly by myself in an empty room. And yet, that lonely space has become the occasion for remembrance, in this moment a kind of invitation of past voices to speak again and come to my aid. If it’s a lesson-plan I am writing, certain master teachers come to mind. If it’s a sermon, then there are certain pastors. If—heaven help us—I am attempting a poem, then the much annotated stars of my Norton anthology start to emerge. Sometimes, it is a friend; sometimes, it is an ancient author I have never met but through their words. I try to ask as politely as possible: will you help me find my words with some of your own?
Read MoreTomorrow is Trinity Sunday, and I can’t help but hear in my head the rock n’ roll classic hit, “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake. Don’t mock me–it will forever and always be a rock and roll classic that will survive the ages and instantly bring me joy when I hear it. Just in case you’re not a regular listener of the “80’s on 8” Sirius XMU channel, to refresh your memory, the song opens with these lyrics:
Read More
