Finding myself in others’ words

One of the features of good memoir (if I remember correctly from my spiritual writing class in seminary) is that it is relatable. This is something I love about the first-person essays that appear in our pages. When I first read Lydia Sohn’s reflection on stability and wanderlust, I thought of when my wife and I wrestled with the decision to move to Chicago for me to take this job. Then Isaac Villegas’s tribute to his abuelo who baptized him made me remember the spiritual legacy of my own grandfather. 

We have also had a bevy of really insightful book reviews lately (and, accordingly, my reading list is growing to an unmanageable length). One review explores the ways that “low anthropologies” can make sense of the political binary in the US. Another introduces the complicated history of evangelicals’ approaches to environmental issues. 

No new video, but I did appear on a podcast last week, and speaking of evangelicals, on the show two of them asked me why I (and many others) left their faith tradition.

Email me: When have you seen some of yourself in another’s story?

Jon Mathieu
[email protected]

The testimony of water

“To remember our baptism is to testify. We reach into our memories to notice God’s grace, to recount the communities that have made us who we are and the people who’ve extended the Spirit of Christ to us with their own hands and lives.”

by Isaac S. Villegas

Staying in a culture of leaving

“My wanderlust always came back, encouraged by daily scrolls through images of friends (or strangers I follow because I wish we were friends) starting new lives abroad or new relationships that appeared more exciting than my own.”

The theological anthropologies implicit in our politics

“A good portion of the conservative/liberal binary can be mapped by attending to the distinctions between high and low anthropologies.”

In the Lectionary for March 19 (Lent 4A)

The light of the world illumines those who are open but is opaque to those who claim powerful position.

Why did conservative evangelicals turn against the environment?

“Historian Neall Pogue delves deeply into the ideology and actions of conservative evangelicals on climate issues in order to understand their antipathy to ‘Christian environmental stewardship.’”

review by Robert Shaffer

What I wished for

“What should we pray for when we are both lonely and also overwhelmed by people? How should we petition when we feel too weak for the task at hand but too strong to ask for help?”

by Yolanda Pierce