Each spring a kind of anxious waiting sets in. I never catch it in the approach, but only after it has congealed into a distinct and concrete mood. Over the last several years, my family has suffered trauma in spring as regular as the change of the season: a life-threatening accident, a divorce, my father’s […]
Several years ago, I had the privilege of serving as a Eucharistic minister in a small church community in upstate New York. I had come to the Episcopal Church as an adult after a childhood spent in evangelical congregations of varying degrees of fundamentalism. My mother was a converted Catholic and preferred the emphasis these […]
Pop-culture, Demons and Philosophy Recently, I enlisted a friend to see The Conjuring with me. The movie claims to be based on real events, which seems to be a standard feature for these types of films, and depicts the haunting of a family upon moving into a new home with a grisly past, yet another […]
If studying theology has taught me one thing, then it is always to be prepared with an apology. By apology here, I mean to invoke both its technical and colloquial meanings. When introducing myself as a student of theology, I often am required to offer a defense of theology as a discipline independent of religious […]
From the very first time I was introduced to the work of Jean-Luc Marion, I was captivated with his account of the passive self and saturated phenomenon. Being principally concerned with the human propensity for self-righteousness, Marion’s philosophy provided me with a way to think the Christian experience while […]
This Christmas season I had the privilege of attending a memorial service, a vigil in memory of the homeless from our area who had died. Gathered in the early dark of the winter solstice, a group comprised of homeless persons, service providers, and local residents read from a necrology, including twenty names new to the […]
In Existence and the Absolute, Jean-Yves Lacoste writes about the inseparability of soul and body. “The problem of the body is that it is an I: not some ‘thing’ that we may or may not possess, but something we are: and, more rigorously, something that defines us as man: as someone.” (p.7) Lacoste is not […]
As the mid-west experiences record flooding, I recall the time four years ago when my own house was flooded. A culvert became blocked, sending the local creek down my road and through my home. While my children waited safely upstairs, the downstairs swam with a foot of brown water. Within three hours, the water receded […]
In God, Death, and Time, Emmanuel Levinas claims that the immanent experience of a transcendent God amounts to a reversal and referral of the desirable (God) to the nondesirable (the Other). This correlation results in a mission to approach and engage the Other, especially as the Other is figured in […]