Spectacle
Since before the writings of Shakespeare, authors, politicians, teachers, script-writers, and preachers have known that if you want people to hear what you have to say and keep talking about it long after the event, you must start with a spectacle. Shakespeare’s best-known example, the three weird sisters (or witches) at the introduction of Hamlet,…
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Presbyopia
I remember the day an older friend came to me and said that he was planning on joining a church that was made up entirely of young people. This man had already lived more life than these young adults expected to live. He had had a successful career as a college president, had written a…
Continue readingSongbird
– by Lance Odegard She’d been flitting at the back and along the sides of the congregation for weeks— her calculated late arrivals working like camouflage. At the back, on the tables, she tends her many plastic bags (the smaller bags inside the larger bags, each tied with strong, tidy knots)—the evidence of a quiet…
Continue readingThe Power and Limits of Science
Two quotes caught my attention this week. One was by a prominent atheist; the other by a prominent Christian. In The Limits of Science, Nobel Prize winner (and atheist) Sir Peter Medawar, writes: Science is a great and glorious enterprise – the most successful, I argue, that human beings have ever engaged in. To reproach…
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Power Over Blindness
A few days ago I wrote about a miracle or legend in the life of Saint Columba. Today, take a look at this passage from Acts 13:6-12. Here we read about a miracle that happened when Barnabas and Paul chose to do the work to which God had called them. Opposition came but God overpowered…
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