• This thing has feathers. (pinned post)

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    Yeah, yeah, I misquoted Dickinson. (She wrote, “Hope is the thing with feathers,” not “Hope’s the thing…” But this is a meme I made a while back that isn’t really a meme because it’s not meming, but it does seem, unfortunately, to be evergreen: Feel free to use it if you like, though.

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  • Even the Dogs Get Crumbs

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    The Gospel lection for this Sunday (September 8, 2024, in the Episcopal edition of the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Proper 18) is Mark 7:24-27. It includes two pericopes, including one of the Gospel accounts of the story of a Gentile woman whose child is ill: Jesus set out and went away to the region…

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  • In the Beginning Was the Word

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    And God said, “Letthere be light!”And there was light, or would have been, had God been crafting a cosmos intelligible to the Bronze Age mind, or mine. Scientists—specifically, astrophysicists—tell us that we can detect light from the Big Bang, the background microwave radiation all around us. We can see into the past via light that…

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  • When Theologians Have Pet Peeves in Holy Week

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    Good Friday, 2024 Pet peeves? Oh, I have plenty. But I won’t get into all my theological quibbles, or my personal tastes and distastes. I’ve actually overstated things in the title. It’s not click-bait; I know you’re the only person seeing this, dear reader. (Thank you!) Really, I want to comment on a few things…

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  • First Sunday in Lent

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    I am not a fan of Lent. There is altogether too much breast-beating for my taste. Or, rather, for my mental and spiritual health. I’m trying to recast it in my own mind, because I know it means so much more. As one of the Proper Prefaces for Lent says, You bid your faithful people…

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  • A Wounded Presence

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    In this post, I am sharing an article published in 2016 that had its start as a term paper for the class, Icons and their Audiences, taught by Rossitza B. Schroeder at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. Elaine Elizabeth BelzA Wounded Presence: The Virgin of Vladimir Icon Abstract:    Between its religious significance and…

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