In the early evening of cool Autumn, When the time for thinking and talking is just right. You can hear the moon whisper back the words of forgotten conversations. Sped upward by the crisp, light air, They are left undone and rain quietly back to the upturned arms of Maple, Elm and Beech. As one […]
David Bazan is the front man in a band called Pedro the Lion. If you haven’t heard of him, or Pedro the Lion, then you have missed out on perhaps the most intriguing, introspective and provocative artist/band commenting on the Evangelical/American Christian world in the last five years. Not that he sees himself that way, […]
This would be so much easier if I were still there. There is a certain feeling of urgency that I cannot quite recapture; a sense that it matters, and not that it matters in some cosmic sense, but that it matters here and it matters today. How clearly unclear it all was. Any thought about […]
We were anxious as we made our way through the early morning crowds on the railway station. It was only nine o’clock and yet already the sun was making the air sticky and oppressive. The commuters sweated and jostled each other. Each Mumbai train was packed to its overflowing open doors. We rounded the end […]
Anglican Bishop Graham Cray explores the life and music of Marvin Gaye in the chapter “Through Popular Music: ‘Wholy Holy’”, featured in the anthology Beholding the Glory: Incarnation Through the Arts edited by Jeremy Begbie. The following essay by Andy McCoy critiques Cray’s theological comparison of the temptation of Christ and temptations of Marvin Gaye […]
The Polyphonic Spree is nothing if not unique—or perhaps that should be unique? This is the band, after all, with 24 members (or so), the band that wears long white robes on stage, the band that includes a ten piece choir, a harpist, a flautist, and a cellist. This is the band that owns a […]
On January 25, 2004, Peter Landesman published a landmark article on human trafficking and sexual slavery in the New York Times called “The Girls Next Door.” In the article, Landesman captured the radical movement of victims through Mexico and into the United States. His investigation into the world of trafficking has raised many questions, but […]
It was the part of the video footage when men would finally look away in revulsion and women would quietly gasp and involuntarily lift a hand to cover their mouths. For nearly a year we had been showing, to anyone who would watch, video clips from Svay Pak, Cambodia – a little village outside Phnom […]
Michele Clark works for the Protection Project, a legal human rights research institute, working to establish “an international framework for the elimination of trafficking in persons, especially women and children.” On March 4, I interviewed Michele Clark in her office at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington D.C. about the […]
Ezekiel 16 would be an uncommon text to hear in a weekend service. It is a very long text, 53 verses and over 1500 words. Furthermore, there are three separate depictions of God’s generosity to mankind. However, this is the only prophetic text banned in the Jewish synagogue [1] and not included in Christian liturgy. [2]This text […]
Russians don’t use closets. They keep their clothes in wardrobes. Most Russians don’t have an excess of possessions so the storage space is unnecessary. Closets are an invention of the west, where people hide the things they don’t want seen. A Russian girl from Vladivostok in Siberia, Olga had longed to leave Russia for the […]
I am here tucked into the warm wet wrinkles. I live here in my womb. No one else has ever been Here, though they enter over and over. they are just pacified there at the aula. yet it is my fear that they will come invade occupy my home my womb. It is the only […]
“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack, in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” –Leonard Cohen The wind picks up above Sunset Lake, caressing and soothing its dirtied shores, knocking Pepsi cans up onto the street away from the water, chanting choruses for a […]