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Archive for the ‘textures’ Category

here and there: Isaiah 2-3

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 24, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Isaiah’s complex journey will celebrate beloved Zion even as it works out a deep, genetic yearning for distant nations to know and serve Israel’s God. The book releases its energy in both centripetal and centrifugal form without denying either motion, as though gathering opposing forces into one insistent, polychromatic song. The book of Isaiah is not simple. Neither is it complicated. Instead, it is complex, a careful gathering of layers into one coherent statement that stretches the imagination while nourishing the reader’s capacity to allow multiple plates to spin. Attention to any one does not cancel out the rotation of the others. (more…)

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self-identity issues: Galatians 1

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 23, 2007| 4 Comments »

Lots of people don’t like Paul.

This Christian apostle seems too pushy, too assured of his own authority, even too misogynist for admiration. We’ve known too many like him, some readers conclude. Indeed, his model has produced a heap of ornery practitioners of his religion.

Thanks, but no thanks. (more…)

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a song in the heart of a woman: Song of Solomon 4-6

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 22, 2007| 1 Comment »

Dan Fogelberg, that troubador of emotive angst, sang memorably that …

There’s a song in the heart of a woman
That only the truest of loves can release.

The love of the Shulamite’s Solomon has with regard to this woman’s song done exactly what Fogelberg exhorts: ‘Set it free.’ (more…)

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strength most perfect: 2 Corinthians 12

Posted in textures, tagged , , , on September 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Anyone inclined to doubt that the apostle Paul was a complex man who enmeshed himself in the most complicated relational webs need only peruse 2 Corinthians 12 to be set right. In a discourse impregnanted with the most dazzling emotional transparency, Paul struggles to articulate the relationship that makes restoration of equilibrium between him and the Corinthians a non-negotiable objective. (more…)

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a holy eroticism: Song of Solomon 1-3

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »

It must be asked what a work like this Song says of the community that embraces it and of that people’s God. A splendid eroticism pervades its lines, eroding the conventions of pious discourse in its exuberant longing for intercourse. There is no voyeurism here, it is true. But the appreciation of a splendid and holy eroticism is blushworthy for readers who have been patiently weaned from such desire and its out-loud articulation. (more…)

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He who stays calm the longest wins: Ecclesiastes 10

Posted in clarity, textures, tagged , , on September 20, 2007| Leave a Comment »

According to the most plausible reading of this taxing work, Qohelet encourages his readers to understand that much can be known by the powers of human observation. Yet this potent capacity of studying how things work here ‘under the sun’ cannot relieve us of our despair.

By these lights, Ecclesiastes represents a subset of the human condition: we are glorious knowers indeed, yet even vanity threads its despairing weave through our lives’ intelligence so long as our perspective fails to access YHWH’s deeper purpose. That achievement is in truth a gift. It depends upon a relationship with one’s Creator that cannot be instigated or managed by the natural means available to women and men who crash against the sour limits of life here below. (more…)

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a time to search and a time to give up: Ecclesiastes 3-4

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 17, 2007| Leave a Comment »

At times the power of a work remains latent until circumstances arrange themselves in such a way that it seems written for this moment. Such is the potency of the extended rumination that we call Ecclesiastes, after the odd name given to the presenting speaker. Worn-out moderns and post-moderns born into despair find in its pages a script of their own mind’s journey. (more…)

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Proverbs 14: blessed excrement

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 9, 2007| Leave a Comment »

‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds’, Ralph Waldo Emerson famously aphorized.

Though the pungency of Emerson’s observation is admirable, the biblical proverbialist beat him to the punch:

Where no oxen are, the crib is clean; But much increase is by the strength of the ox.

(more…)

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mixed emotions: Proverbs 13

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 8, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Atria and ventricles notwithstanding, the heart is otherwise not a well compartmentalized organ. The biblical proverbialist knows this:

The heart may ache even in laughter,
And joy may end in grief.

We are complex little creatures, walking about in fragile skin with the twin burdens of glory and tragedy just beneath. We feel more than we can say, know more than we can shape into words that can flow gracefully from trembling lips. Our joy knows the bounds only of our inability to express it. Our sadness runs deeper than words can say. All of this is mixed up together in one potent brew of human experience. (more…)

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embracing the pain: Proverbs 11

Posted in textures on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

A morning email from a colleague points out slippage in my conduct. A crack has opened unnecessarily in my leadership of people whose lives and wellbeing matter more than one can know.

From across the globe, words of rebuke. No pulling rank, no shooting to kill, just the words of one straight-talker to his colleague and friend. Friend and colleague. (more…)

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