Friday 10/22/04 05:02 PM
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I received a call from a colleague at a Christian university. As a professor in the university’s theater department, there had been a complaint about the language in a production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. Leaf through Miller’s text and you’ll find a few “damns” and “hells.” The complainer was incensed that the school would call itself “Christian” and yet offer such “secular” material to its patrons. And he came on quite strong, unsettling the student actors unfamiliar with how to respond to someone who saw no validity in offering a significant play in the American theater canon. There seemed little to dissuade him, it was the occasionally crude word that dismissed for him the possibility of redemptive engagement with the play and the cast. I was asked to help with a discussion within the department about the issues raised.
Post continues; 2811 words total. Read the rest of "“A Sacred Use of the Profane?”"
Friday 10/22/04 02:54 PM
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Most Christians even remotely familiar with the gospels would recognize the Pharisees as the sect prominently noted for being recipients of Jesus’ scathing denunciations. In Matthew 23 He labels them as “blind guides”, “white-washed tombs” who don’t “practice what they preach”, “who love the place of honor”, “hypocrites”, “sons of hell” who “shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces”. You’d think they must have been chainsaw murderers.
Post continues; 465 words total. Read the rest of "The Pharisaic Process: An Unholy Headlock"
Friday 10/22/04 02:38 PM
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Deeply entrenched in middle age, I have become a bird-watcher. This autumn, bird-watching had become almost as significant to me as the early Saturday evening overview of college gridiron scores. Confirmation on whether the golden-finches have left for warmer birdfeeders is suddenly rising to almost match the details of Michigan State University’s fumble recovery ratio and quarterback sack stats. Waiting a few months of college football Saturdays, I discover there are no warmer birdfeeders in the gold finches plans. They’ve stayed and they always stay. It seems my assumption that brightly colored birds migrate to warmer, more colorful winter environs was wrong. But they do change their color, from yellow to drab brown—evidently so they can blend in better with the snow-filled winters void of yellow things. Perhaps I should paint my bird feeder yellow, prompting them to change their minds.
Post continues; 483 words total. Read the rest of "A New Bird-Watcher's Notion of Hail to the Victors"
Friday 10/22/04 02:19 PM
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There was a commotion down at the local “YMCA” yesterday afternoon. It didn’t rank up there with the more flamboyant commotions— like the fights one occasionally sees between hockey parents at Pee-wee league games or the sudden disturbances at TCBY when they’ve run out of the Oreo crumbs. No, this one would have been below your average commotion, except for the bizarre claims of the one causing the disturbance. It appears he kept shouting, even as police were hauling him away from the lobby, that he was Dwight L. Moody, nineteenth century evangelist and developer of the “Y”. No one believed him, especially the receptionist, Robin Sullivan of Oak Park, who felt compelled to call the police.
Post continues; 824 words total. Read the rest of "D.L. Moody Stumbles into the Local YMCA"
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You are reading the portfolio of Paul Patton. Latest update on Fri 22/10/04.