Cape Town, South Africa
//With a prophetic imagination we see that Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son Isaac was in fact the Resurrection of Isaac who was as good as dead already. (This video is based on interpretative skills of David Buttrick)
//Full title: To make God our first love is the most loving way of loving everything else.
A slightly-less-than-literal interpretation of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son Isaac.
//The question we should ask is not: “Do you believe?” but rather “What do you believe and does it bring LIFE?”
//South Africa’s amazing constitution was written from the perspective of protecting the vulnerable but sadly the proposed Protection of Information Bill betrays our constitution in that it is written from the perspective of protecting the privileged. Lean more about it from at the Rights To Know website.
//Why asking many questions of Jesus is a greater sign of knowing Jesus intimately, then merely ‘believing’ you’ve figured him out.
//What St. Paul can teach us of engaging with people with faiths different from our own
//Reflections on Jesus’s saying that there are many rooms in my Father’s house, and how a break in scripture can mistakenly break a narrative.
//Why, in Acts Chp 1, did Jesus tell his disciples to return to Jerusalem, the place which held the greatest fear and represented the greatest pain for them? The very same reasons he would tell us to return to our ‘own’ Jerusalem.
//How can one enjoy joy, and celebrate life when there is so much suffering? It’s actually our responsibility to do so.
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Poem: A Brief for the Defense
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving
someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The
Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at
the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and
the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the
village is very sick. There is laughter every day in the terrible streets of
Calcutta, and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance
of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not
enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the
ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our
attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the
end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship anchored late at night in the
tiny port looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront is three
shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat comes slowly out
and then goes back is truly worth all the years of sorrow that are to come.
— Jack Gilbert
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All images used under Creative Commons license.
Image credits in order of appearance:
D. Sharon Pruitt
Joanne Q. Escober
Ubo Pakes
Ibrahim Lujaz
Ariful H Bhuiyan
Living In Kuito
Anant Rohankar
James Emery
Hamed Sabar
Clemson
Lisa Edwards
Pranav
Pedro Simoes
Ubo Pakes
//How reference to different texts within a text we are reading can reveal so much more about that reading.