The bells, the ringing bells invade and they
Refuse to be ignor’d. And in that they
Refuse to be ignor’d they shake us out…
Based upon the Gospel and Epistle for Quinquagesima: Luke 18.3ff & 1 Cor. 13.1ff.
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"[W]hen the company heard all delivered by [the minister] without book, and with free readiness, and profound gravity, and unaffected composure of voice, looks, and gestures, and a very powerful emphasis in every part (as indeed his talent was excellent in this way), they were strangely surprised and affected, professing that they had never heard a more suitable exhortation, or a more edifying exercise even from the very best and most precious men of their own persuasion! …they were afterward much more surprised and confounded, when the same person who had officiated assured the principal men among them, that not one period of all he had spoken was his own; and convinced them by ocular demonstration how all was taken word for word out of the very office ordained for that purpose in the poor contemptible Book of Common Prayer."
Read MoreI kneel at Jesus’ feet to pray;
The light shines through the glass.
We hear the Baptist’s cry today:
“The reign of death shall pass.”
Read MoreReflections on the debate in the 1570s between two Cambridge scholars, Thomas Cartwright (deprived of his professorship and fellowship for his views) and John Whitgift (Master of Cartwright's college, later elevated to the See of Canterbury).
Read MoreIt’s midnight but we aren’t sleeping now.
The rumors fly: the thief is coming soon.
When I arrived at the 2019 Conference on College Composition and Communication, after settling into my hotel, the first thing I did was look over the titles and abstracts of the over 800 presentations. One word emerged as a widely-shared theme and assumed value: subversion.
Read MoreUpon that night, He took up bread:
“This is my body,” so he said;
“Remember me and take and eat;
Behold, my flesh, indeed, is meat.”
Read MoreIn reading we encounter things not tuned to our own experience and worldview and, rather than do the humbling work of trying hear the music, we can instead pick it apart and feel entirely satisfied with our own cleverness.
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