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"You cannot retire too much from the mindless chatter of the world." - Francois Fenelon
Blog Archive
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2008
(68)
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June
(11)
- The Amy Winehouse of American Denominations
- Review of "The Seeking Heart"
- Another Important Book Review
- Review of "Hearing God: Developing a Conversation...
- Review of the New Living Translation
- Some Summer Reading Ideas....
- Exploding Whale
- Camping Trip to Queen Wilhelmina State Park
- Pray for Hannah Beth
- Raising Readers
- 5000 Years of Religion in 90 Seconds
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June
(11)
The Church I Serve
Seven Stanzas at Easter, by John Updike
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
About Me
- Elliott Scott
- Houston, Texas, United States
- I'm not really cynical. I just try to sound that way because I think it's cool.
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5 comments:
Wow. That's really interesting. We've come so far...
That's really neat! Hopefully, we will continue to see more and more blue on that map!
Yeah, it's a bit oversimplified. It doesn't take into account religious minorities. Most places can't be represented by a single color. For instance, there is a huge and growing church in China, while Europe is hardly solid blue.
Still it's an interesting summary of the major trends over 5000 years.
This is intersting. Now here's a great reason to have the "blues".
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