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** Seeking a common life of care
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“Crappy birthday to me.” It’s a line I’ve heard my mom say many times over the years, jokingly (but perhaps with a bit of real bitterness). And I now find myself saying it—as this email lands in your inbox, it is my birthday, and a pretty momentous one in terms of age (hint: it used to be viewed as over the hill, but nowadays I’m told I’m entering my prime). And on this birthday week I am living at that same mom’s house; my own home is experiencing furnace failure and a water main break.
Expensive repair quotes and inscrutable insurance claims are not how I dreamed of ringing in the big 4-0. But this tough stretch has reminded me of two things: how much worse many other people have it right now, and how fortunate I am to have the support of nearby friends and family. The timing is perfect for me to receive Isaac Villegas’s excellent new essay ([link removed]) on mutual care and building a common life together.
Plus scroll down for more great new content. Kendall Vanderslice explores how the academy might better develop theologies of cooking ([link removed]) , starting with “those whose cooking is shaped by necessity, not choice.” A book review by Rafia Amina Khader looks at the memoir of a boy-band-member-turned-imam ([link removed]) . And even more below, like a delightful poem about a girl who sings odes to joy with the wrong words ([link removed]) and tunes.
Jon Mathieu
Email me (mailto:
[email protected]?subject=Who%20cares%20for%20me&body=Jon%2C%20) : Who provides care for you when you need it?
Click to schedule ([link removed]) a Friday lunch chat with Jon
Click to find Jon ([link removed]) on (X/Twitter alternative) Bluesky
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** Emotional communism ([link removed])
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“To steady ourselves we’ll need to find each other, to make room for one another around a table, in our living rooms, at church.”
by Isaac Villegas
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** The academy needs better theologies of cooking ([link removed])
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“I predict that academic theology will continue to show a greater interest in the topic of cooking. But I fear that it will be an interest in cooking abstracted from the actual people who have been responsible for cooking for most of human history.”
by Kendall Vanderslice
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** How a boy band star from Boston became the beloved Imam Tay ([link removed])
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Taymullah Abdur-Rahman, or Imam Tay as he is affectionately known, demonstrates that friendship across religious difference can elicit personal and social transformation.
review by Rafia Amina Khader
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** In the Lectionary for February 2 (Epiphany 4C) ([link removed])
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Jesus didn’t come to make us feel good.
by Diane Roth
Epiphany 4C 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]) .
** Perfect Sense ([link removed])
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“Too young to read,
she sang songs by heart
mixing up tunes and words,
adding nonsense sounds
as gleeful as odes to joy…”
poem by Kathleen L. Housley
** The heart of embodied theopoetics beats for liberation ([link removed])
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A new edited volume seeks not to replace traditional, White male–focused theopoetics so much as to reshape the subject altogether.
review by Adriana Rivera
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