I recently visited an Amish general store and, cheese in hand, wandered to the library section. The Low Dutch catechetical books were no surprise, but a pamphlet of melismatic chant settings was less expected. I also saw a copy of Heaven Is For Real. Seeing the wheat and tares so sown together reminded me of […]
Wednesday, 09 December, 2020 by Rebekah Curtis
The church I attend was born 140 years ago, a classic little white clapboard. The first time I saw her, I sighed at the thought of calling her home. The front is a blocky triangle, due to the addition of bathrooms on either side of the original facade (post-Victorian weaklings decided they were needed, and […]
Sunday, 01 September, 2019 by Rebekah Curtis
In my final year of college, as my master’s program and wedding approached, The New Yorker magazine came to me. It included a Bob Mankoff cartoon in which an affable lady editor sat at her desk across from a scruffy dude wearing a toga suggestive of Mesopotamia. A manuscript lay between them, and the caption […]
Friday, 01 March, 2019 by Rebekah Curtis
Nature is an idol who has never gone out of fashion. In every generation, she is rediscovered and re-deified. She teaches us to decry fakeness in all things: crackers, detergents, personalities. She pressures us to buy organic, to be true to ourselves and our schools. Nature, in her idolatrous capacity, would rather have her devotees […]
Wednesday, 31 August, 2016 by Rebekah Curtis
Skandalon is a word dear to the first-semester Greek student’it literally means ‘stumbling block.’ To English speakers, scandal connotes a lewd CNN headline or a story from the next church over. Scandal is engrossing and lets us shake our heads in superior disgust. We would never do anything so icky and dumb. The Greek student, […]
Monday, 31 August, 2015 by Rebekah Curtis