Uniting oneself means, in every case, migrating, and dying partially in what one loves. But if, as we are sure, this being reduced to nothing in the other must be all the more complete the more we give our attachment to one who is greater than ourselves, then we can set no limits to the tearing up of roots that is involved on our journey into God
Christians aren’t the only world-faith that has had its world-view challenged by the mechanism of Natural Selection (Evolution). While Islam has not dealt with the challenge to the extent that Christians in the West have, there are the beginnings of debate within Islam as how to accommodate of view of Creation that ranges somewhere between strict Creationism and Evolution.
Starting by drawing a distinction between “crackers” (who break into things) and “hackers” (who try to create new unexpected things) a Jesuit priest writing in
Is the biblical narrative true in the same way that a mathematical theorem is true? Is it true in the same a natural law is true? What about a historical account of an event? What about an eyewitness account? David Lose says that’s the wrong sort of question to ask.
When Barbara Brown Taylor was recently asked to preach on “Word and Music” for a special service, she began to search out what Jesus had to say about music in the Gospels. She found very little, and what little was there was not very complimentary. But then she looked up the use of the word “hymn” in the Gospels.
Those who wish even to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand—from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to the topic, the very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: “How can I be good?” and “How can I do something good?”
The opportunities inherent in sharing socially across boundaries of distance are tempered by the dangers of ceding too much of oneself to the virtual world. Following Jesus Christ involves locating our identities first and foremost in the God who breathes those identities into our very souls. If we allow too much of our identities to escape into the ether of the virtual world, there may not be enough left to escape into God.
The election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States, was an event of great interest to Dr. Muhlenberg, and through some of its issues formed a rather remarkable episode, both in his own life and in that of the Hospital.
Patriarch Tikhon’s nine years in America were important ones in the affairs of the Orthodox Church there. During this period the episcopal seat was removed from San Francisco to New York. During this period Bishop Tikhon became Archbishop Tikhon, the first American Orthodox hierarch to bear that title.
How does living in a virtual world influence living in both the physical and the spiritual ones? How do we maintain the body of Christ when the physical bodies we see and touch in church expand to include the virtual bodies we inhabit online? What place does prayer have in our instantaneous, Tech-driven world?