Father in heaven, we thank You for all the goodness You have poured out upon us in Your Son, Jesus Christ, and in His Spirit and Yours. We are grateful for the Sabbath rest prepared for us in Him, and we thank You for calling us into Your Sabbath salvation. Your kindness is forever, Your …
Sensate Hatred of Nobility
“The ripened sensate mentality of today, seeing human beings as no more than physical objects moved by instincts, reflexes, and drives, virtually disallows any attempt to raise them above the animal level. Genuine heroes are all by banned from literature and all but impossible for authors to create.” (B.G. Brander, Staring Into Chaos, pp. 300-301).
But What If Metaphor Is Ultimate Truth?
“But, at the same time, no one should nervously imagine that this critique of the Enlightenment proceeds from any relativistic postmodern nonsense. The modernist and postmodernist share this one thing in common: They both hold, at bottom, that metaphor is meaningless. The modernist goes off to find meaning somewhere else, suitably formulaic, and the postmodernist …
Redoubling Failed Efforts
“Instead of closing shop as a result of all its failures, desire, urged on by truth, plunges deeper into the abyss; at every turn in the road, it must transform the last dreadful mess that it has made into a new model and a new point of departure, a still shakier platform for the launching …
What Did He Sing?
The Scriptures tell us that after He instituted the Supper, our Lord Jesus sang a hymn with His disciples and then they went out. We know that the psalms sung at the conclusion of the Passover meal were the Hallel Psalms, 114-118. So what did our Lord sing when He was facing death of an …
The Wine Is Better
We gather together now, in accordance with the will of God, and under the protections provided by His Spirit, and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember that at the conclusion of our service of worship we gather at the table of the Lord. All baptized Christians are welcome at this table, and …
Special Effects, Dry Ice, and Lasers
“Instruments continued growing in size and complexity. Everything else about music grew as well, as colossalism transformed the art. Some theaters seated up to forty thousand people. In one play a thousand mules pranced about the stage. Concerts featured a hundred blaring trumpets, accompanying thousands of actors and acrobats. ‘Not being able to make it …
Metamorphing
“In our entertainment-crazed times, we have to take care not to use stories that have been transformed into something else. I call the process ‘metaphor-morphing,’ or ‘metamorphing’ for short. In this process the basic metaphors of story built into the world by God are reversed. For example, the serpent in the Garden was a dragon, …
Hungry For Praise
“Adulation is one of those things that are impossible to come by if we have to beg for them” (Girard, A Theater of Envy, p. 148).
Guess You Kinda Had To Have Been There
Merold Westphal has another essay in this book entitled “Laughing at Hegel.” I read the whole thing. “Christmas Humpheys says, ‘There is more honest ‘belly laughter’ in a Zen monastery than surely in any other religious institution on earth’ — and the faithful chant before Maitreya, the Messianic Buddha whose avatar is a clown: When …