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Marginalizing Care
I posted an essay over at the Front Porch Republic today on how the industrialization of healthcare and education erode our valuation of human care. I’d appreciate any thoughts or comments you might...
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Balthasar Sandbox 1: Beauty’s Tensions
This spring I’m planning to write a series of posts that work through some of the ideas in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Seeing the Form. And by “posts” I really mean disjointed, thinking-out-loud,...
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Balthasar Sandbox 2: Two Ways to Misperceive Beauty
In the first few pages of Seeing the Form Balthasar makes a case for why beauty is particularly needed in today’s culture, but he provides a clearer historical account in the first two chapters of Love...
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Balthasar Sandbox 3: Tuning Students to the Beautiful
Last week I concluded with Balthasar’s description of the challenges we face in “tuning” ourselves and others to the key of divine beauty. This is particularly difficult at universities that, on the...
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Balthasar Sandbox 4: Gratuitous Love
In reading Balthasar and thinking about beauty this week, I came upon several ideas inviting further exploration, but today I want to focus on two stories in the gospels where Mary (the sister of...
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Balthasar Sandbox 5: Sacramental Education
Today I want to finally bring these reflections on Balthasar and beauty to bear more explicitly on the subject of education. My efforts to do this were helped greatly by a handwritten letter I received...
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Balthasar Sandbox 6: Forming the Beholder’s Eye
This week I was talking about beauty with my freshman writing class to prepare them to evaluate a work of art. When I asked my students to define beauty several of them predictably claimed that it was...
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Illuminating Words, Transforming Beauty
Since many of our conversations here involve the role of beauty in teaching, and since Megan discussed the Saint John’s Bible in her excellent post last week (I promise we didn’t coordinate), I’d like...
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Organizing Enlightenment at a Christian University
Organizing Enlightenment, by Chad Wellmon, charts the way eighteenth-century German universities developed as a response to an overwhelming amount of printed information. Much like the contemporary...
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Illumination
Throughout the coming year, as Spring Arbor University hosts a Heritage Edition of The Saint John’s Bible, I’ll be posting reflections on specific illuminations both here on Christ and University and...
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Make a Poisonous Serpent
The Lectionary reading for Sunday, September 14, is from John 3, where Jesus uses a variety of striking metaphors to tell Nicodemus how to enter the Kingdom of God. Nicodemus can’t seem to understand...
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The Sower and the Seed
Last week I looked at one of the abstract illuminations in The Saint John’s Bible, and this week I’ll turn to one in the tradition of Eastern iconography. This illumination stands at the beginning of...
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Esther
The Old Testament lectionary reading for Sunday, September 27 comes from Esther. This complex and fascinating person receives a rich portrait in The Saint John’s Bible, one that foregrounds her liminal...
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The Garden of Eden
One of the lectionary readings this past week was from Genesis 2, which relates the second version of the creation story. Whereas in Genesis 1, God creates humans on the last day, as the crown of...
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Job Frontispiece
I’m not sure what this says about my personality, but one of my favorite books growing up was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. The Old Testament lectionary reading this week...
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Out of the Whirlwind, Where Were You
Last week, we reflected on Job’s desire for God to speak to him, and this week, we read the scene a few chapters later where Job gets his wish. The manner in which God speaks to Job, however, probably...
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Out of the Whirlwind, He Will Wipe Every Tear
The lectionary reading this week brings us to the end of Job, where Job responds to God’s questions by repenting and humbling himself. While Job’s perplexities concerning divine justice have not been...
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Ruth and Naomi
The Old Testament lectionary readings this week and next come from Ruth, a brief but moving book that receives two lush illuminations in The Saint John’s Bible. The story’s happy ending sometimes leads...
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Ruth the Gleaner
Last week we looked at the beginning of Ruth, where Naomi, burdened with the loss of her husband and two sons, returns to Israel. While she feels that life has turned against her, Ruth’s faithful...
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Hannah’s Prayer
The Old Testament lectionary reading this week comes from I Samuel, and it gives us an opportunity to consider one of the many textual treatments in The Saint John’s Bible. These comprise works of art...
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