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…

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,”…

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…

Hope through pandemic and resurrection
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Hope through pandemic and resurrection

Hamilton, Ontario poet John Terpstra is also a cabinet maker. Correspondingly, his writing hovers over themes of spirit and place. In Wild Hope Terpstra offers a sequel to In the Company of All: Prayers from Sunday Mornings at St. Cuthbert’s. There Terpstra concisely expressed that small congregation’s embodied spiritual desires, praises and hopes. With personal…

In which God incubates the Church through a pandemic
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In which God incubates the Church through a pandemic

We’re crouched in the dark, gently bending over the antique incubator. I hear a faint chirping, and my husband lifts the metal lid. There’s a bowl of water inside to keep the eggs soft, and the air smells like warm, wet grass. Inside, a newly hatched chick bravely stands, singing his baby victory songs. And…

Listening for trumpets
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Listening for trumpets

Lately, I keep hearing trumpets. Did you hear them at Prince Philip’s funeral? “Taps” was played at my father-in-law’s military interment ceremony last month. I read trumpet texts at the funeral. “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling…

Disruptive hope

Disruptive hope

“Return to Normal” and “Build Back Better” are the two dominant mindsets for COVID-recovery. Any suggestion of more disruption would invite stone-throwing, but that may be our future. High levels of present anxiety and fear for the future lead to equating hope with more tranquility. Is there another kind of hope? Is hope possible in…

Being re-membered
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Being re-membered

“If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain” (1 Cor. 15:13-14). I’ve often wondered why Easter celebrations are not nearly such a big deal in our culture (or even in…

Pat

Pat

I met her at the swimming pool. We would chat together in the shower (and later joked that we probably wouldn’t recognize each other “with clothes on”). A few times we arranged to walk together in downtown Edmonton’s river valley during lunch breaks. I eventually left my job, and we lost touch. Then, one day,…

A creed for troubled times
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A creed for troubled times

Throughout the world many Christians recite or chant on a weekly basis the ancient Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, with these familiar closing lines: “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” When repeated so frequently, it is easy to neglect their inner meaning. Yet the words nevertheless enter our…