Culture • Christianity & Culture The Return of the Prodigal Son: From Two Artistic Vantage Points Randy Newman | 9 min read On a recent visit to The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, I was drawn to a painting I had not seen there or anywhere else before. My first guess was that it was by Rembrandt because the overall hue was that rich dark brown the great Dutch painter used so frequently. And like... Continue Reading
Faith • Liturgical Reflections The Beautiful and the Useful: Hugo, Les Miserables, and Lent Dr. Steven Garber | 4 min read “You are mistaken; the beautiful is as useful as the useful… more so, perhaps.” These words have been running through my heart the last week. Making sense of life for life, of what matters and what doesn’t, of what we believe to be the good, the true and the beautiful, and what is not, is... Continue Reading
Vocation • Visions of Vocation The Task of Translation Dr. Steven Garber | 5 min read Tacos and tortillas are easy. And adios is like that. But what about las golondrinas? and Sacramento? Having grown up in California, I began to learn Spanish in the second grade, making my way through elementary letters and numbers, year by year learning something of the complexity of another language. And while I never became... Continue Reading
Faith • Biblical Reflections Revelation: A Competing Symbolic Universe Dr. Nicholas G. Piotrowski | 16 min read I hear the word “apocalypse” in casual settings more than a dozen times each year. It seems that every year there is a “Snow-pocalypse,” by which the evening news means 12 to 14 inches of snow will inconvenience you for about a day and a half. Or my son might talk about the “Vocabulary Apocalypse,”... Continue Reading
Faith • Theological Reflections Shadow and Light Dr. Steven Garber | 3 min read Shadow and light. Watching the mysterious interplay between the sky and the grass, the trees and the flowers, I found myself thinking about the way shadow and light makes its way through life for every one of us. We live amidst both glories and ruins, all day long having to make sense of the very... Continue Reading
Culture • Current Conversations We the People… One More Time Dr. Steven Garber | 3 min read “It always makes sense to tell the truth”– Vaclav Havel, 1936-2011. Hard as that is for each of us, it is only compounded when all of us lie. The personal is one thing, and it matters very much; the political is another: there the problem of lying is more horrible because more people are affected.... Continue Reading
