Nail Scars and Bullet Wounds – Isaiah 1:15 – Bradley Jersak
Nail-scars & bullet wounds.
"And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood."
-Isaiah 1:15
20 million guns sold in 2020
18.5 million sold in 2021
An Emmaus Way / Christotelic response to Isaiah 1:15 might see God's own hands "spread forth" in the cruciform, bearing bullet wounds, pleading with us, "Will you hide your eyes yet again?"
Somehow, we must get beyond the repetitious platitudes of ineffectual "thoughts n prayers" or news-cycle brief faux-outrage to find someone somewhere in whose authentic grief we can sit and practice co-suffering love.
Uncensored Laments and Spiritual Breakthrough — by Bob Ekblad
In my travels I often minister in places where people’s expectations of God’s intervention to bring healing or any kind of transformation are low. This is usually because they’ve suffered big disappointments: praying for friends and family who haven’t been...
‘The Moon Wouldn’t Let the Sky Be Dark’ and ‘While Alone, Thoughts Escape’ by Sheila Murray-Nellis
The Moon Wouldn't Let The Sky Be Dark You were the one whose name I heard when the wind moved through the valley. I heard the trees whisper it, but you weren't listening at the time. The moon kept pouring more and more silver into the sleeping...
An Orthodox Anglican Conversation (Pt. 1) – Dart and Puhalo
THE 10 MAJOR FAITH AND ECCLESIAL STRUGGLES OF OUR AGE — Fr. Ronald Rolheiser
Several years ago, the superior of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Rome asked Fr. Ronald Rolheiser to compile a list of the major spiritual questions bubbling in the Catholic world, based on his experience as a writer and speaker. At NCR’s request,...
John Dear’s ‘Come Out My People’ — a Review by John Dear
"Come Out My People!": God's Call out of Empire and Beyond by Wes Howard-Brook (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2010) xvii, 525 pp, $30 USD. A review by John Dear, S.J. A year ago, I spent ten days staying at Tahrir Square in Cairo, marching with...
‘Tangled’ and ‘The Finch’ by Sheila Murray-Nellis
Tangled We found the finch, eyes clear but wings limp as string, its spindly feet twisted in wire. Untangling toes, you were quick to stroke ruffed feathers; then you hung back: the small body fluttered to the oak. You wear your fatigue like...
‘What’s beneath the surface’ and ‘The Taste of Wind’ by Sheila Murray-Nellis
What’s Beneath The Surface If you were someday to rise out of the foaming waters of the sea to count the stones and broken shells of my heart, If you were to listen there and to separate the gull’s cry from the sucking sounds of stones beneath inhaling waves,...
Thomas Merton and Nouvelle Theologie by Ron Dart
If I can unite in myself the thought and the devotion of Eastern and Western Christendom, the Greek and the Latin Fathers, the Russian with the Spanish mystics, I can prepare in myself the reunion of divided Christians. From that secret and unspoken unity in myself can eventually come a visible and manifest unity of all Christians…. We must contain all divided worlds in ourselves and transcend them in Christ.
Thomas Merton — Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Sola Scriptura: a potato parable
A Parableby an Orthodox Christian priest who has just returned from an ecumenicalgathering of largely Evangelical clergy. Once there was a starving man who found a field of potatoes, and finding the potatoes, he found life. Potatoes alone were enough to...
The Traditional-Liberal Divide – Metropolitan Hilarion
Address by Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations to the Annual Nicean Club Dinner (Lambeth Palace, 9 September 2010) Your Grace, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, At the outset, I...