Blog
Why You Should Be Reading (and re-reading) 'A Letter From Birmingham Jail'
MLK's letter should continue to be the prophetic manifesto for those who seek racial justice and equality. It will not due to discount it as only relevant to a situational past any more than it will due to discount the Pauline epistles as only relevant to their context.
J.R.R. Tolkien On Fairy Stories (Part 1)
J.R.R. Tolkien is almost always evasive. I have a feeling that's not a sentiment he would enjoy. Like many of those that partook in the tradition of late 19th and early 20th-century British literature, Tolkien desired clarity: not clarity in the sense of merely being understood at a subjective level but clarity in the...
Covid and Culture - (No. 3) - Learn to Mute the Sound
In the last blog, we overarchingly discussed the fact that, notwithstanding the fact that this particular crisis is a global health pandemic, we do have a rare opportunity to look in the mirror and ask some hard questions about how we individually and socially practice lifestyles and rhythms. I do, very intentionally, use the word we there because I am trying myself to do this. One of the things I fear most is that globally and societally (especially here in the U.S.), we end up returning to the rat race and muddled priorities and false gods that have left us exhausted, burnt...
Covid and Culture (No. 2): Evaluating How We Do Life
This is a time where individually and collectively we should be productively asking certain questions: what is essential? what needs to be changed? what beliefs do we have the need to be dispensed with? where do we place our security and trust? what would make us better individually and collectively? how should we re-prioritize our commitments and concerns?
Covid and Culture (No. 1): Awareness over Anxiety
The recent outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic has rocked our world. With over 17,000 global deaths and projections into the hundreds of thousands or even millions, the anxiety over what we should be looking for, how we should be handling this culturally and individually, and how we can help those who are being affected by this in a myriad of ways has become paramount. We simply are at an unprecedented time in this respect. Diseases are nothing new. Diseases that seem to stop the entire world have not historically come about very often. And, yet, daily life trudges on for...