i don’t speak Siri

“Siri, what’s the menu at the Mohawk?” “I found a Mohawk Lounge on Red River. Is that the one you want?” “Yes.” “I can call them or give you directions. Which do you want?” “Neither.” “Big Brother is a book by George Orwell. Shall I read it to you?” “No.” “There’s nothing to read!”

you can’t fail self-care

I often find God’s provision odd. This morning I thought I didn’t have enough time before my trainer-workout to dig into homework… and besides, I had no clean underwear in my drawer because it was still in the laundry room. Hey! Laundry is interruptible! So I folded and put away… all the laundry. At the […]

my sanrio life

I’ve hit the kind of behindedness that has me saying, “OK, God, I’m going to do this one next thing. PROMISE ME you’ll worry about all the rest… and right when I finish, tell me the next one next thing!” There’s not much creativity in that much compression. So instead, I will show you the […]

sermons from contemplatives

I can see I’m going to get a lot of practice thinking in sermons. This term, my Hebrew exegesis syllabus states we are to hand in three sermon points for each translation we are assigned. In theory, we get to do this after benefit of our class discussion, but in real life I suspect I’ll […]

more than logic

Prompt from Seminary of the Southwest’s T4325, “Theopoetics: Theory and Practice”:What passage or idea from this week’s readings made your heart sing? “I circled back right back to where I had begun, to the question of beauty. Back to the questions that science does not ask, not because they aren’t important, but because science as a way of […]

under construction

Back when the World Wide Web was young, it was popular to include, front and center on one’s site or page, a graphic that looked like a yellow road sign of a stick-person digging. (Sometimes these would be –gasp!– animated.) Below would be the caption, “This page (or site) is under construction.” Even back then […]

jesus was right about the door

But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret… (Matthew 6:6) Yeah, the passage itself is about owning where you’re seeking your prayer’s reward—are you looking to God, or the crowd?—but it came to my mind for a totally different reason: When I […]

winsome and ferocious

My A offered this to me sometime during her high school years; it’s been hanging above my desk ever since. I think it encapsulates the way she was feeling then (forever angry), the way she approaches the world (with a wry sense of humor), and the essential winsomeness she’s never been able to shake, even […]

scriptural reification is idolatrous

Reification is a complex idea for when you treat something immaterial — like happiness, fear, or evil — as a material thing. This can be a way of making something concrete and easier to understand, like how a wedding ring is the reification of a couple’s love. However, reification is often considered a sign that […]