By Thomas M. Fuerst As a white United Methodist pastor living in the American South, I have grieved for two years as Covid-19 has run through my city, my region, my nation, and our world. Fortunately, I pastor a congregation that largely takes masks and vaccines seriously, but I lament that I live in an…
Tag: Prayer
Moira Rose: Learning to Pray from an Unexpected Teacher
By Christopher West Frustration, we might say, is part of the human condition; it is one aspect of our experience that never truly goes away—a rather frustrating fact(!)—but lingers on into the present. Several years ago, Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury, was quick to point this out, while delivering his homily during the eucharistic…
Sex, Prayer, and Broken Being in Nymphomaniac
By The Very Reverend Archimandrite John Panteleimon Manoussakis (For Antonio Mizael) “Yahweh, you seduced me unlawfully, and I consented to being seduced; you raped me, and you were too strong for my resistance to prevail.” Jeremiah 20:7 “Thou art victorious; open-mouthed he gapes at your beatitude, you took him as a woman, cut him through, opened…
A Prayer to Ryan Gosling: A Review of Song to Song
“With Song to Song, Terrence Malick avoids the traps of sentimentalism on the one hand, and moralism on the other while telling a deeply human story — one filled with deception, confusion, beauty, longing, goodness, and truth — and therefore a deeply religious one. Its poetic style makes it challenging to audiences, and leaves it open to the ridicule…