‘Contraditions’
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‘Contraditions’

On Palm Sunday in sunny Florida, a state full of palm trees, I walked out of church. It was the first time I walked out of a sermon. No, I wasn’t preaching, although maybe at that moment I was. The text in this Presbyterian church was Luke 19:41-44, Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem. There was no…

Music to melt the stars

Music to melt the stars

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.” – Gustave Flaubert In the week prior to my writing of this column, this happened: Because I have a word limit for this column, I will…

Raskolnikov and resurrection
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Raskolnikov and resurrection

Many years ago, when I was still a graduate student, I decided to read some of the major Russian novels of the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s taken me decades, but I finally got to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866). The story is set in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg. Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov…

Dual nature of the light
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Dual nature of the light

As we learn more about God’s creation, our commonsense understanding of things sometimes becomes limiting. Quantum physics, for example, is full of descriptions of the subatomic world that seem, on their surface, bizarre. Light can be described as either waves or particles. Good experiments produce evidence that supports both realities. And yet our commonsense view…

More than just surviving
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More than just surviving

Does anyone recall “Build Back Better”? It became a popular rallying cry midway through covid. After the first lockdown, we saw that collective action could develop vaccines faster than ever and provide support to keep poor households afloat. Covid exposed vulnerable spots, such as old age homes, but there was also optimism that we could…

Our human insignificance and the One who makes us matter
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Our human insignificance and the One who makes us matter

“As long as we are not quite sure we are unworthy, God will keep narrowing us in until he gets us alone.” Oswald Chambers There’s a kind of loneliness that almost befriends you. A kind that wraps around me, scarf-like, as I ski across the fields. The snow is much like I imagine manna would…

Reasons God doesn’t break our legs
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Reasons God doesn’t break our legs

When a random intruder left newlywed Jessica Ziakin-Cook with a severed femoral artery and nearly took her life, some people at church said it was a lesson to increase her dependence on God. But Jessica drew theological conclusions from a deeper well. I met Jessica Ziakin-Cook at the University of Victoria last December, and she…

The gardener she thought He was
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The gardener she thought He was

Let’s go back to the Easter morning empty tomb and then turn the clock forward 20 years. There we encounter an aging gardener with memories to share. Sukkot is a harvest festival, when Jewish people build huts – sukkah – which remind them of the wilderness years in Jewish history as well as the transience…

The end of the world as we know it
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The end of the world as we know it

“Each morning comes along and you assume it will be similar enough to the previous one – that you will be safe, that your family will be alive, that you will be together, that life will remain mostly as it was.” That’s from Cloud Cuckoo Land, American author Anthony Doerr’s new book. “Then a moment…

Resurrection life
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Resurrection life

Most religions address the challenge of death with some concept of an afterlife. Islam presents the goal as paradise. Eastern religions speak of reincarnation, then escape into the great universal spirit. Most Materialists say, “When you’re dead, you’re dead,” with hope being in the next generations. Christians sometimes talk of life after death as “heaven,”…

A Hymn for Ukraine

A Hymn for Ukraine

Prayers quiet fears, / Smoke turns to incense, / Shrapnel turns to flowers, / Braided into the crowns we wear, / Clearing the rubble together.

Don’t give up!
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Don’t give up!

We are living through some challenging, “unprecedented,” and even discouraging times. I recently watched the Oscar-nominated film “Don’t Look Up”, featuring an astronomy grad student and her professor who make the shocking discovery of a planet-killing comet on a collision course with Earth. When they share the urgent news with the United States president, the…