Critic Cal

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and

"Christians are like Revels " was the postprandial proposition up for debate. I'm not sure if we were discussing denominational diversity, or the fact that some of us make other people want to vomit. Sadly, there was a parting of ways long before the topic had been fully explored; the metaphorical significance of re-sealable pouches barely even got a mention. By Evan-Amos (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons Well, now that my dinner's gone down I've decided that Christians are not supposed to be like Revels: superficially similar but fundamentally different. In the interests of seasonality, I am going to suggest that we should be more like Mini Eggs : superficially different but fundamentally the same. By William Warby (originally posted to Flickr as Mini Eggs) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Not "the same" in a boring, uniform, restrictive way. I am most definitely up for celebrating diversi

World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of things being various.   (From  Snow  by Louis MacNeice)  Some people seem to find everything so straightforward. And that is why I must make everything extra-specially complicated, to compensate. At my university Christian Union, they got you to sign the UCCF doctrinal basis if you were nominated to serve on committee. (Cue horrified gasps from political idealists at student's unions everywhere…but our CU wasn't in the student's union and besides, there is a certain logic to the idea that the people running a 'religious society' be in some sense 'adherents'…) I signed it myself back in the day, and, although some of points a) through k) touch on things that I've still much to learn about, I reckon I'd sign it again in an instant. It is, after all, a pretty good summary of what I understand and believ

[NB: On several occasions, lovely, generous-hearted people have informed me with a blend of enthusiasm and compassion that they "like my blog but don't understand it". The following was written to address the issue. Only, it became indulgently self-illustrative (i.e., makes even less sense than usual).  It is a shameful thing to plead 'irony'; let's hope I've at least "got it out of my system" for now... Time will tell. Meanwhile, apologies :-/ ] I recently read  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man  --  Joyce's prequel to Ulysses , charting the childhood and coming-of-age of Stephen Dedalus as he awakens to religious uncertainty, political dissatisfaction and literary aspiration. The character of Stephen is widely acknowledged to be a bit of a fictional alter-ego to Joyce himself, so it's sorta semi-autobiographical. There's a big 'religious anxiety' theme going on with it, which I was thinking about thinking about writi