Bleak Theology

The New Yorker - Cartoon by Eric Lewis. For....

This sermon was offered at St. Lydia's in Brooklyn, New York on the first Sunday of Lent, February 17, 2013. Worry. Luke 12.13-34 I was an anxious child. I worried about being left alone. I worried about doing the right thing, whatever that was. I worried that other kids would pick on me. I worried. And as I

In a recent issue of New York Magazine, I came across one of those articles where something in your brain clicks and a long-missing Tetris block falls into place. The subcultural locus of my bleak theology is somewhat grounded, aesthetically, in the (then-called) "alternative", post-punk music I discovered in high school in the late 80s/early

It can be easier to learn, to retain information in cadence. Rhythms offer repetition. A kind of re-membering, reattaching significance to each other and to ourselves. Gilgamesh, Iliad, Odyssey, Job, Aeneid, Metamorphoses. These are all poems, all ancient stories. These are also all religious poems. Gods are everywhere. And they interact with humans. There is