Safe Haven

 In my indelicate way, I may have suggested that listening to “higher” music like opera and “classical” was “snobby.” Well, maybe it is, and please consider me a snob henceforth. I was wrong. And I think it was just a bad day that day. There’s life before Beethoven’s 5th, and life after. (And Smetana. And Tchaikovsky. And loads else.) You all know I have an addictive personality, and this addictive personality wants more snobby music. Not tomorrow. Not next week. As I like to say, “Like, yesterday.” I still love Taylor Swift, at least between 2006-2010. The rest ranges between “Meh” and “Please stop”. And more generally, I don’t trust the taste of people who categorically hate “Country” music. That’s just silly. And Johnny Cash is not country; Johnny Cash is Johnny Cash. The people who say they hate country but love Cash are just hipsters who like Johnny Cash. Yes, the “bro country” is terrible. And let us explore why. Suppose you’re one of those people who listen only for ...

“My chair is my throne from which I rule the world.”—Laura Cross, Halloween, 2017 “...and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Ex. 19:6, RSV) “But God, who is rich in mercy...made us alive together with Christ...and made us sit with him in the heavenly places...” (Ephesians 2:4-6) “Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” (1 Cor. 6:3) Yes, my teacher, I am listening. In context, Laura was humorously dressed as Cleopatra for Halloween. The word for true things in theology that also point to something else is called typology . The exodus from Egypt happened. It is also true that this liberation is a sign or type of the full liberation offered to everyone in Jesus. The Bible is littered with typology. Here’s the eleventy billion dollar question: What if our lives are littered with the same typology, signs of hope for a future with God, and we just miss it? Do you see a wheelchair, struggle, difference, and defect when you look at me (or Laura)? Why...

In the first footnote of chapter one, Dr. Feingold quotes the Jesuit theologian, Rene Latourelle: “God’s word to humanity is the first Christian reality: the first fact, the first mystery, the first category...Revelation is the original mystery; it communicates every other mystery.” (Theology of Revelation, pp. 13-14) The heart of theology is the Incarnation and the paschal mystery, because the heart of those mysteries is God’s love for humanity, and for each one of us. Latourelle writes with great beauty and truth regarding the Incarnation in another work. He writes: “This radiance of power and wisdom and love, which is, properly speaking, the glory of Christ, attests that he really is God-with-us, come among men to deliver them from sin and raise them up to everlasting life. It is by his Incarnation that the Son manifests the Father and his saving design; it is also by means of the Incarnation that men identify Christ as the Father’s Son.” (Christ and the Church: Signs of Salvati...