Where is God in clothes?
To further aggravate our emotional woes, modernity has cast aside what had been, since the dawn of time, a central resource for coping with life’s vicissitudes. God has died and there is now little we can turn to, intone in front of, or beg for deliverance from when times grow hard. We dwell in a world ruled by the pitiless laws of science in which
... See moreAlain de Botton • A Therapeutic Journey
Right now, the source of the meaning crisis is our lack of any shared aspiration. We have lost touch with what we have in common, and as a result, we have become alienated. We have become incapable of communion—with each other, with the universe, and with God. We have lost touch and have become disintegrated, incapable of intimacy. Yet God is alway... See more
God and Eternal Objects
In the loss of personhood the congregation is no longer a church-community (no longer a Gemeinde) but becomes an institutional shell absent the revelation of Jesus Christ. Trying to innovate the empty shell, absent the Holy Spirit experienced in the spirit of personhood, is a deeply wearying and resentment-inducing operation,
Andrew Root • The Congregation in a Secular Age (Ministry in a Secular Age Book #3): Keeping Sacred Time against the Speed of Modern Life
Existential ideas and attitudes have embedded themselves so deeply into modern culture that we hardly think of them as existentialist at all. People (at least in relatively prosperous countries where more urgent needs don’t intervene) talk about anxiety, dishonesty and the fear of commitment. They worry about being in bad faith, even if they don’t
... See moreJames K. A. Smith • On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts
the third idea: tikkun, healing a fractured world. Each religious act we do has an effect on the ecology of creation. It restores something of lost harmony to the cosmos. Or, to use another term from Lurianic kabbalah, it ‘unifies the divine name’ and helps mend the breach between God’s essence and his indwelling presence (Shekhinah) which is curre
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