Category: Ekklesia
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our foolish belief: earth is the meek’s
The Enchantments of Mammon Thoughts, Part II From a humanitarian point of view the best government is that which we find in an insane asylum…Their aim is to make the inmates of the asylum as comfortable as possible, regardless of their respective moral deserts — Thurman Arnold The lesson for the ‘new class’ was clear:…
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magnificat philosophies
If scarcity is the credo for worshippers of mammon, Mary’s Magnificat is the counter-constitution that frees the Marian society from manufactured fears of lack and proclaims a superabundant God whose creation is saturated in divine profligacy.
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morning prayer with robins
This morning at the duck pond with my customary cup of coffee, I looked up over the brim to see a family of robins trolling for worms in a grass as green as the cover of my London Review of Books. The sunlight hit each and every blade, you could count them, like Monet. At…
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revolutions per minute
“The human capacity to organize our efforts in ever more productive ways should give us hope, the hope that our unprecedented domination over nature will allow us also the wisdom, the power, and the strength to create a society that serves the needs of all the world’s people—an empire of cotton that is not only…
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Albert’s Eucharist
He could not have commanded anything more beneficial. Nor could he have commanded anything more lovable, for this sacrament produces love and union. Nor could he have commanded anything which is more like eternal life. Outside the cathedral, on the day that the allegations of another bishop’s bad criminal behavior broke, I spotted the 40…
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now in a mirror dimly
The doctrine of original sin, which teaches the universality of sin, has an important foundation: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 Jn 1:8). This doctrine encourages men and women not to remain in guilt and not to take guilt lightly, continuously seeking scapegoats…
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cracks in the secular
Americans, says James K.A. Smith, idealize the open road, the open road seems to be the pinnacle of freedom: detachment from previous communities; independence, the ability to drive on our own without a caravan; and autonomy—the ability to reinvent ourselves as a lonely traveler. But, Smith points out, this is an illusion. Roads are always…
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to have a door
Someone said that we can give alms by giving away seconds of our day. Time is commodified—each second is a second to be earning. And that, actually, we can give away our perishable treasure—not gold or silver (in this economy, let’s be honest, who has much of those anyway? Our treasure’s become less vulnerable to…
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chacos in the kingdom of god
three moments The universe was not made in jest but in solemn, incomprehensible earnest.—Annie Dillard, The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek And sometimes its earnest bubbles out of our eyes before we can stop it, because we are fragile, fungible, infectible beings. I. I was in the doctor’s office, looking at x-rays of my hips. I…
Renée Darline Roden © 2024 