The Cloister Walk

Jeremiah reminded me that the pain that comes from one’s identity, that grows out of the response to a call, can’t be escaped or pushed aside. It must be gone through.

Maybe Mary’s story, and this feast, tell us that if the scriptures don’t sometimes pierce us like a sword, we’re not paying close enough attention.

Gail Ramshaw has said, “Christianity requires metaphoric thinking,”

There is but one creator, and “creating” is the very thing that artists cannot do.

The human experience is of violence, and the psalms reflect our experience of the world.”

for all of the military metaphors employed in the Old Testament, the command that Israel receives most often is to sing. I

on this day worship reinforced my conviction that only Christ could have brought all of us together, in this place, doing such absurd but necessary things.

But to the modern reader the psalms can seem impenetrable: how in the world can we read, let alone pray, these angry and often violent poems from an ancient warrior culture? At a glance they seem overwhelmingly patriarchal, ill-tempered, moralistic, vengeful, and often seem to reflect precisely what is wrong with our world. And that’s the point, or

To make the poem of our faith, we must learn not to settle for a false certitude but to embrace ambiguity and mystery.