Tabitha

Hans Boersma writes that radically open communion invites the devil to the Table, but we with our own hubris are enough to cause problems. After all, wasn’t it pride that led Lucifer to fall from Heaven in the first place?

“The opposite of murder is creation—creation, which is the telos of love. And because art, true art, is an act of creation, it always transforms its subject into itself, even if the subject is murder. An act of darkness is not the same thing as a work of art about an act of darkness.”

I reminded him of a story from an ancient Chinese Zen master, of the Buddha coming upon some people who had just been robbed while picnicking. They were racing around, enraged, asking him to help them. But Buddha asks, “Who would you rather find, the burglars or yourself?”

Tim nodded, and then said, “The burglars.”

“Same.”

— Anne Lamott, Somehow

“I try to think of promotion as an extension of writing rather than as something that comes after the writing is finished. Readings, interviews, reviews, and interactions with readers are ways of continuing to revise the meaning of your writing, even after its publication. Try to retain the creative spirit that inspired your writing in the first

“But rationalizing what God does involves the risk of losing its difficulty and otherness to human expectations. His great forgiveness of the first criminal offends people’s sense of justice, unless they can find a way to read vengefulness into the tale. We are instead to learn that mercy is nearer than justice to Godliness, and that mercy can