New CC content on resurrection, woman pastors, Emily Dickinson, and more.

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** Life and death
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I am back from a lovely and restful vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains. Restful except for the final morning, when a massive adult male black bear sauntered over between our cabin and car just as we were set to leave. Ignoring our yells and claps, he just kept slowly moving toward us, forcing us and our final bits of luggage back into the house.

As you can deduce, I lived to tell the tale. Though I tell that tale with a smile, at the time it was truly frightening. Bear attacks are rare, but those statistics are cold comfort when I’m staring down the face of a wild and hungry beast. Suffice it to say that themes of mortality have been on my mind lately. And so some of our new content at CC this week is timely: a reflection from Debie Thomas about the (prematurely called) death of the church itself ([link removed]) , and a poem from Jeanne Murray Walker about the mathematical elusiveness of resurrection ([link removed]) .

Plus scroll down for more great content, including an essay about women posing problems ([link removed]) , an article about Emily Dickinson’s love of botany ([link removed]) , and more.

Email me: Have you experienced nature’s terrors?
Jon Mathieu
Click to email me (mailto:[email protected]?subject=Re%3A%20Editors%E2%80%99%20Picks)
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** Which church is dying? ([link removed])
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“The question is not whether the church is dying; it’s whether the church will have the courage and humility to become once again what God has always called it to be: a seed that willingly falls into the ground and dies so that new life can nourish the world.”

by Debie Thomas
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** Women posing problems ([link removed])
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“I remember these women, the problems they posed and how their getting in the way made the world new.”

by Melissa Florer-Bixler
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** Emily Dickinson, botanist ([link removed])
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“Lots of us have experiences of nature that stir a feeling in us. But Dickinson became galvanized.”

by Timothy Jones
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** In the Lectionary for September 15 (Ordinary 24B) ([link removed])
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As a preacher, I used to worry that people don’t listen to me. Now I worry that they do.

by Ron Adams

Ordinary 24B archives ([link removed])
Get even more lectionary resources with Sunday’s Coming Premium, an email newsletter from the editors of the Christian Century. Learn more ([link removed]) .


** Writing Equations ([link removed])
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“Resurrection: the word hides how it works,
the way the sconce in our living room
conceals a puzzle of tangled wires …”

poem by Jeanne Murray Walker


** A novel about (not) writing an essay ([link removed])
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“The pleasures of reading this novel are pleasures of contemplation rather than action, and they are intense.”

Amy Frykholm reviews Rosalind Brown’s Practice
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