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  • Leaping Pointy-Headed Clerics in a Single Bound?

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    “Pope Francis as superman, flying through the air with his white cape billowing out behind him, the image graffitied by an anonymous artist onto a wall in Rome was tweeted by the Vatican today.

    Speeding forwards with his fist raised, the heroic pontiff – crucifix swinging in the wind – carries his trademark black bag, with the word “values” written across it, in Spanish, in white letters.

    “We share with you graffiti found in a Roman street near the Vatican,” the Pontifical Council for Social Communications from the Holy See said on its official Twitter page.”

    Read Pope as superman: Vatican tweets graffiti of hero pontiff

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  • National Sculpture Garden in Winter

    Today I walked through the Sculpture Garden. Snow on the ground. Temperatures in the 20s. Here’s my message for the day from the work of Robert Indiana:

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    Washington, DC—Robert Indiana’s AMOR (conceived 1998, executed 2006) is now on view in the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. A play on Indiana’s famous LOVE sculpture, AMOR is constructed from red and yellow polychrome aluminum. This is the first sculpture by Indiana (American, b. 1928) to enter the Gallery’s collection, and it significantly advances the Gallery’s holdings of monumental modern sculpture. The sculpture was given to the Gallery in May 2012 by Simon and Gillian Salama-Caro in memory of Ruth Klausner.

    Indiana originally conceived the familiar “Love” graphic in drawings, paintings, and sculptures between 1964 and 1966. The first sculptural version was displayed at an exhibition at the Stable Gallery in Manhattan in 1966, and the artist has continued working with the motif since. The image became most widely known through a commission for a Museum of Modern Art card in 1965 and the 8-cent “Love” stamp issued in 1973 by the United States Postal Service. The graphic became an emblem of the 1970s in the U.S., associated with the relaxation of social strictures. The monumental AMOR made its first appearance in the center of Madrid in 2006. With its inclined “O” and vibrant colors, it extends the spirit of “Love” into several languages and cultures.

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  • Video: Zoe Keating & Jim Wallis at Davos

    “Skills are not the most important attribute. Sacrifice is. Nelson Mandela taught us that.”–Jim Wallis

    “We here are the most included people in the world, let’s include the most excluded.”–Jim Wallis

    And more about amazing DIY cellist Zoe Keating in the January 2014 issue of Strad. She performs “Leap.”

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  • Wall Street and Wealth Addiction: Driving the Economy While Under the Affluence

    19MONEYjp-superJumbo-v2Read former hedge-fund manager Sam Polk’s excellent article on Wealth Addiction:

    “I see Wall Street’s mantra — “We’re smarter and work harder than everyone else, so we deserve all this money” — for what it is: the rationalization of addicts. From a distance I can see what I couldn’t see then — that Wall Street is a toxic culture that encourages the grandiosity of people who are desperately trying to feel powerful.”–Sam Polk, For the Love of Money

    Then listen to Ched Myers’ “Who then can be saved?“: Jesus and the Rich Man as a Text of Terror and Liberation.

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  • Ruth Graham: Hope for Evangelicals and Catholics on Gay Issues

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    Jounalist Ruth Graham

    The Boston Globe recently published two excellent articles, by Ruth Graham, on Catholics and evangelical Christians finally finding some positive traction on homosexuality from within their own ecclesial context.

    Recommended reading:

    For Catholics, ‘natural law’ one path to accepting gays by Ruth Graham (Boston Globe)

    “Our knowledge of biology has changed over time, and if homosexuality is increasingly understood as “natural” for a segment of the population, then this could, in theory, change the Church’s reading of natural law.”

    Can the evangelical church embrace gay couples? by Ruth Graham (Boston Globe)

    “[I]n the past several years, a new current has arisen in conservative evangelical thought: A small but significant number of theologians, psychologists, and other conservative Christians are beginning to develop moral arguments that it’s possible to affirm committed, monogamous same-sex relationships not in spite of orthodox theology, but within it. They argue that the Bible, read properly, doesn’t condemn such relationships at all—and neither should committed Christians.”

  • Pope Francis: Let Them Breastfeed

    Francis baptismsOn the festivity of the Baptism of the Lord, Pope Francis celebrated Mass in the Sistine Chapel. During the celebration, he baptised 32 babies: 18 girls and 14 boys. One of the children, Giulia, was the daughter of a couple married by civil rites only, who asked the Pope during an audience if he would baptise their child.

    “These children are a link in a chain,” said Francis. “You, as parents, have a son or a daughter to baptise, but a some years from now they too will have a child to baptise, then a grandchild… And this is the chain of faith! What does this mean? I want to say only this: you are those who will transmit the faith, you are the transmitters. You have the duty of transmitting faith to these children. It is the most beautiful inheritance you can offer them: faith! Only this. Today, take this thought home with you. We must be transmitters of faith. Think of these, think always about how you can transmit faith to your children.”

    During his homily Pope Francis joked about the noise and the crying of the babies. “Today the choir is singing, but the most beautiful choir is that of children, who make noise… Some will cry, perhaps because they are uncomfortable or because they are hungry: if they are hungry, mothers, go ahead and feed them, because they are the center of today’s celebration.”

    “Francis said in December that women should feel comfortable about breast feeding during his ceremonies,” reported The Telegraph, “a trend which could alarm conservatives in the Vatican. Breast feeding in public is rare in Italy and almost unheard of during Catholic church services.”

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  • Lynn White Jr.: On Primitive Franciscans

    Lynn-White-JrThis quote is from the famous 1967 Lynn White essay “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis.” Today I came across a version of that essay that includes a section on St. Francis and Franciscan theology that is often edited out of reprints.

    “Since the roots of our [ecological] trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not. We must rethink and refeel our nature and destiny. The profoundly religious, but heretical, sense of the primitive Franciscans for the spiritual autonomy of all parts of nature may point a direction.”–Lynn White, Jr.

     

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  • Epiphany in Connemara

    “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.”–Matthew 2:12

    By Annie Deppe (January 6, 2014) Renvle, Connemara, West Coast of Ireland.
    By Annie Deppe (January 6, 2014) Renvyle, Connemara, West Coast of Ireland.

    Poet Annie Deppe sent this Epiphany Day photo taken from her living room window on the Connemara coast of Western Ireland. (Their Christmas was punctuated by severe storms and hurricane-force winds.) Like her writing (Sitting In The Sky, Wren Cantata), her photo provides a lovely visual reminder that sometimes we are called by dreams to “return home by a different way” (Matthew 2:12).

     

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  • Pope Francis: Where’s Your Zeal?

    131107123616-pope-francis-smiles-story-top“An authentic faith always implies a deep desire to change the world. And this is the question we should pose ourselves: do we too have great visions and zeal? Are we bold too? Do our dreams fly high? Are we consumed by zeal? Or are we mediocre and satisfied with our theoretical apostolic plans? Let us always remember that the strength of the Church does not reside in herself or in her organisational capacity, but is instead concealed in the deep waters of God. And these waters agitate our desires, and our desires expand our hearts. It is as St. Augustine said: pray to desire and desire to expand your heart. It was precisely in his desires that [Saint Pierre Favre] was able to discern the voice of God. Without desires, one cannot go forth, and this is why we must offer our desires to the Lord. In the Constitutions it is said that we help our neighbours with the wishes presented to the Lord God.”–Pope Francis

  • Downton Abbey’s ‘Father Christmas’ Brings Tidings of Great Warming

    http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1

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