It’s so much easier to criticize than to contribute. But not everything is polemical, so having critiqued what I believe to be the (functional) evangelical stance on creation, I should offer some thoughts of my own.
Continue reading “Creation as Gift, Pt. 2”Author: Daniel
Daniel Stanley is a Bible teacher at The School of Discipleship who enjoys writing and reading about theology and culture.
Five Reasons to Sing Somber Songs in Worship
I like sad songs. I don’t mean sappy love songs or My Chemical Romance or anything like that, but more somber forms of instrumental or sacred music—take the Agnus Dei sung after Samuel Barber’s Adagio, for example. I know that makes me a minority, but I think there’s good reason for the evangelical church to depart from its quest to happify everything it touches and reclaim some of the more somber, minor, reflective songs in its worship. Here are five reasons:
Continue reading “Five Reasons to Sing Somber Songs in Worship”Creation as Gift, Pt. 1
I’ve come back. Hip-hip-hoorah.
Allow me to kick off my return to blogging with some wildly unsupportable speculation.
Continue reading “Creation as Gift, Pt. 1”Romans 8.20
I wrote this last September, while feeling weary. It seemed that creation, too, was tired, and waiting for consolation.
The stones of the eastern wall are weary;
Dew drips from the roof with resignation:
Come, come; when will he come?
The bones of the trees ache with age
And the wind grows weak and cold.
Pale light sweeps the battered creation—
It is John the Baptist, come with his lamp.
Knees aching as he climbs the horizon,
Still he ascends to his pulpit.
one more day, one more day.
He will come, he will come soon.
Boy Means Girl
In the latest bit of Republican skullduggery, the Trump administration is considering “narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth.” The horror! Continue reading “Boy Means Girl”
“Two roads diverged in a wood…”
Walking out of the theater after seeing The Greatest Showman, Kara asked me what I thought. I told her I’d like to see it about a half-dozen more times, and then write a mixed review. Of course, I didn’t need to see the movie to know that. We had already listened to the soundtrack more times than I can count, and had watched a few interviews and videos of the actors workshopping their songs. I knew I would love the film, and I knew I would be troubled by elements of it. Continue reading ““Two roads diverged in a wood…””
Back at the Mirror Museum
About a month ago Kara and I were in Columbus, and we decided to go to the Columbus Museum of Art (I should say I decided, but it was my birthday). Toward the end of our walkabout, we sat down in front of Frank Stella’s La vecchia dell’orto, a sort of three-dimensional piece about 13’x15′, all aluminum and fiberglass and canvas. A real monstrosity in my opinion, but that’s where the chairs were.
