Parts of Speaking Publishing

As a member and fan of THE DISPATCH, I recommend it and especially this article: https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-faith/more-than-christians-2/  Fellow "church members" are more than people paying dues to the same organization and sitting in seats on Sunday morning.  

The quote by C.S. Lewis about the megaphone of pain has outlived its usefulness. God whispers in tragedy, too. God doesn’t need to scream at everyone. We don’t all need a blitz to give him our attention. God can give us a pretty good nudge in the ribs in our everyday life. It is our complacency that is the enemy. Right now, as I’ve mentioned, I’m reading Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, a book on lament, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (more on that later), and T he Power of Mindful Learning by Ellen Langer. The first and second, and the fact that we had actual snow Friday and I have nowhere to go—has led to me to contemplation. The last twenty years…..yes, what a whirlwind. People marvel at what I accomplished. Looking back, I do too. I will pick these last twenty years because at the start, by son was moving into high school and needed less of my attention (or so we think). In the whirlwind, I lost something, and now I am trying to find it. It is mindfulness and attention and r...

I have two birdfeeders off my deck. Yesterday, we had a rare 4 inches of good, clean snow and the world now looks idyllic. The male cardinals act like kings or Vikings or conquerors in my back yard. Four birds perch on the feeders, three cardinals. They deign to let a wren or chickadee land for a short while, but most of them are on the ground, eating the crumbs that either I dropped in the snow or the other birds were not able to keep in their mouths. Or perhaps they are feeding others? Can we know? That is probably our tendency, post-romanticism, of attributing humanity and even human kindness to animals. “ Cardinal sins” is a Roman Catholic term; Wikipedia says they are pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth (acedia). (Wikipedia calls them the “Seven Deadly Sins.” I know they don’t have anything to do with bright red birds, and animals don’t sin; they just are. Someone called the birds cardinals because of their resemblance to the red-robed leaders of the Roma...

 Resolution is one of those English words with two distinct meanings, like solution and exhaust and refuse (with different emphasis).  We resolve to change (in my case, it should be to desugarize) and we come to a conclusion. In this case, the post is about the second, a resolution about my struggle with the topic of lament.  As mentioned before, I am reading, slowly, Dark Cloud, Deep Mercy by Mark Vroegop. My general sense is that the book is about grief more than the whole range of what lament means in Scripture. Lament, it seems to me, is more about our corporate and individual response to sin and its consequences. Since grief, usually in loss through death, is a consequence of sin, it is one aspect of lament. But I think that you can find reasons to lament when life's external circumstances seem okay. First, because they are not, and second, because we allow the appearances to be all that we see.  Yet I can let this contemplation on lament lead me into some dark ...

This morning I sit by my window, warm cup of Maxwell House in my embracing fingers, comforted by a propane log fire, accompanied by two large dogs who stare at the falling snow with—what is it? Fear? Disinterest? A desire to stay warm? It is a snow day, a rare thing in North Georgia, or I should say, a rare thing that becomes reality after threats by the weather service. This is supposedly the icepocalypse. We have to hunker down, avoid roads, work remotely. Fine with me. I pull up the shades in the family room and can watch the pleasant site of bright scarlet male cardinals at my feeders and their dun-colored mates. Pleasant to me, perhaps not to them. Since neither I nor Butter nor Nala are outside, they are free to find food, which may already be diminished. They are also free to chase off other birds. I see another species—perhaps a type of Chickadee—that is a newcomer. Since it has been overcold the last few days, the snow is sticking and piling. About an ...

I live in mountains, specifically those of Northwestern Georgia. We have our own kind of light, of sunlight, at different times of the day. The sun rises over the Blue Ridge mountains to the East, mountains that sometimes are gloriously snowcapped, a hope for this week. To the west is a range where Lookout Mountain TN and GA stands at the north end of our vision. This morning dark clouds hovered over the entire sky except at the Eastern horizon. A ball of fire perched on the eastern peaks, and the color was a new one for me—orange, amber, coral in combination and diffusion. The light tinted the barren trees and hills I drove on my way to work before 8:00 a.m. I caught a glimpse. I had to get to the office.  But I also had to write this down and the next day, driving the exact same route, I looked for the exact same sunrise and it wasn’t there. And it struck me that art is trying to make the ineffable permanent, the glimpse a gaze for others to enjoy, the abstract concrete, the s...

 I will not get into a habit of only posting podcast recommendations, but as a person with a  podcast myself  (Dialogues with Creators) I listen to quite a few.  This one is Russell Moore's weekly podcast for January 8, "Harm, Trauma, and Church Abuse." It is an interview with Diane Langberg, who has written recently, among other works, When the Church Harms God's People.  Dr. Langberg has a storied career as a psychologist for over 50 years, and she talked about abuse in the church when it was not the thing to do.  Fascinating talk.  She says at one point: The church killed Jesus.  I understand her meaning. Our sin, like everyone who has ever lived other than Jesus himself, was the reason for the cross. We in the church have, I hope, chosen to benefit from it and believe it.  But in my observation (if not direct experience) we don't always benefit from it in the way Christ determined.  Another link:   https://www.christianityt...