Seeing Through Everything. And Seeing Nothing.

by Christopher Myers The benefit, of course, of seeing through everything is that not much is lost on you, and Franzen has an amazing ability to skewer hypocrisy and to layer everything in irony. In reading the novel though, I couldn’t help but be reminded of C. S. Lewis’s observation that to see through everything […]

Nature’s Grace: Encountering The Tree of Life

“Nature is shot through with grace, such that it is impossible to separate one from the other. Grace is not some alien force that occasionally intrudes into a closed system (“nature”). As G. M. Hopkins declared, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” It is grace all the way down.” – Stewart Clem […]

Renaming the Reader

The Bible won’t be reduced to mere representations and symbols, although it has those. The Bible is much like the angel that Jacob wrestles, refusing to be pinned. Refusing to be named or seen completely. Able with a touch to ruin the reader and able to bless him forever. Even to rename the reader. And […]

You can write what you know. But you can also write to figure things out. It’s the difference between chasing butterflies and pinning them to a board. It loses something when you catch them. Josh Ritter in an interview with Tom Ashbrook on NPR’s On Point.

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it… . A story that is any good can’t be reduced, it can only […]

The Baker and the Cupbearer

(Rudiments of reading) Simply as a piece of literature, the Holy Bible is a remarkable feat. Many different authors writing many different genres across many different geographical locations and thousands of years anthologized into an unbelievably consistent and unified work of literature. Contained in each smaller narrative are layers that point to a much larger […]

In a few minutes the door opened and a young mozo stood there and he and the rider spoke and the man nodded toward the outside and the mozo looked toward the outer door and at the other rider and at the boy and then withdrew and shut the door. They waited. – Cormac McCarthy. […]

From the Amarillo Daily News, October 30, 1928. Author unknown: …One of these factions is Catholic, the other protestant. I know that Protestants pray, because I have prayed with them. And I know that Catholics pray, – and pray direct to God, – for not long since I passed by a little Catholic graveyard in […]

I took this photo today at my folks’ place; it shows why the conquistadors and vaqueros called the town in which I live “Amarillo” which means yellow in Spanish. We’ve had less than half-an-inch of rain in 2011, and about two weeks worth of 100 degree days. Romans 8:22 – For we know that the […]

The Parody of Human Endeavor.

cwmyers: “All human effort falls short of its intended potential, all human aspirations exist under judgement, and all human achievement is measured by the standards of the coming kingdom. In the present historical context, this means that Christians recognize that all social organizations exist as… The Parody of Human Endeavor.