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Articles by Joel Clarkson
Uma experiência com o sagrado (Joel Clarkson)
Livro Resenha publicada em 6 de dezembro de 2023 Minha estante Adicionar à minha estante Crie sua biblioteca cristã. Marque o que já leu, avalie e acompanhe metas. Baixar grátis Trecho de Uma experiência com o sagrado (Joel Clarkson) em PDF — leitura grátis Leia um trecho gratuito de Uma experiência com o sagrado (Joel Clarkson) escrito por Joel Clarkson, livro de 206 páginas publicado pela Editora Mundo Cristão. Visualização e download liberados pela editora via Google Books.
From the Annunciation to the Visitation
Artists throughout the centuries have tried to capture the moment when the angel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary that she will become the mother of God. These depictions attempt to approach the unapproachable, to capture even a fleeting glance of that moment of all moments: the instance in which the infinite God, whose essence exceeds every category of thought and exists beyond being itself, quickened into frail, embryonic finitude in the womb of a human woman.
Harmonizing Silence
Silence is golden. The familiar adage is simple enough, although its sentiment is rarely attained by most of us in this age of relentless noise. Modern life moves at such a breathless pace and our lives are so entirely occupied by action that the idea of silence exists in our minds as a sort of longed-after restfulness, a state of peace just beyond our reach. And yet, when we arrive at the threshold of such quiet, the possibility of emptiness makes us agitated and restless.
The Mysterious Barricades between Fathers and Sons
Father’s Day offers the opportunity to reflect on the way the relationships between fathers and their children reveal something of our shared identity as children of God. Human fatherhood gestures to the eternal, ineffable God who has graciously made himself known to us. Our fathers have the capacity to reflect in their lives that divine source that grounds us in safety, belonging, and the very experience of being known and loved.
Holy Saturday and the Journey to Emmaus
In the Triduum, the three final days of Holy Week beginning on the evening of Holy Thursday and ending on Easter Sunday, Christians around the world journey through Christ’s Crucifixion, death, and Resurrection. On Good Friday, Christ raises his arms to embrace the world in the new life born from his agony and death. And on Easter Sunday, Christ tramples down death as the first fruits of the restoration which all creation anticipates.
Balthasar and Prayer. By Travis LaCouter. London; New York: T&T Clark, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Pp. xi, 216. £85.00 (HB) / £28.99 (PB).
Book Review Balthasar and Prayer. By Travis LaCouter. London; New York: T&T Clark, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Pp. xi, 216. £85.00 (HB) / £28.99 (PB). First published: 26 December 2023 No abstract is available for this article.
Revelation and Mystery
The great medieval hymn “O Magnum Mysterium” celebrates the mystery of the Incarnation, taking us past the final stretch of Advent to peer in through the window at the nativity scene of Luke 2. It has captivated the imaginations of Christians throughout the centuries in the way its simple text unfolds into deeper and deeper layers of revelation of the Word made flesh in Christ.
Harvest Song
The Plough Music Series is a regular selection of music intended to lift your heart to God. This is not a playlist of background music: each installment focuses on a single piece worth pausing to enjoy. In this season of shortening daylight and bourgeoning autumnal hues, farming communities prepare for harvest time.
At the End of the Ages Is a Song
In the days prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as fear built to a froth in news reports, military projections, and NGO preparations, something strange happened: people began to gather, often in public, to sing. In a video captured for the world to see, a crowd of Ukrainian Christians stood in a subway entrance in Kyiv and sang out the spiritual anthem “Prayer for Ukraine” as others passed in a frantic rush before war hit the city.
Makoto Fujimura Sings with God, Carries His Cross, and Awaits the New Creation
One of the most formative moments early in my artistic journey was hearing Andrew Peterson’s song “Let There Be Light.” I was in my late teens at the time, just beginning to grapple with the musical gifts that would eventually lead me to a career in composition. But as Peterson crooned the lyrics, “When your spirit is hovering over the deep / In the image of God just look into that darkness and speak,” I remember the lightbulb illuminating in my mind: My creativity is an act of faith.
Bearers of a Divine Light
Color relies on its relationship with light to guide our focus toward a given point. Like the sun above us on a clear day, everything we see reflects the focal point of our own bright star, and the vision of the world itself ever points in return to that source. All that we know of color in our visual intake of the world – or, for that matter, of depth, contrast, angle, proportion, or any other seen aspect of it – is dependent on this light.
Ordinary Life Is Crammed with Heaven
Taste and see that the Lord is good.” For Joel Clarkson, a composer and Berklee College of Music graduate, words like these (from Psalm 34:8) offer much more than a metaphor. In Sensing God: Experiencing the Divine in Nature, Food, Music, and Beauty, Clarkson, now pursuing a theology PhD at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, shows how our physical senses can point the way to a larger understanding of our Creator and his workmanship.
Divine Light in the O Antiphons
The Plough Music Series is a regular selection of music intended to lift the heart to God. It is not a playlist of background music: each installment focuses on a single piece worth pausing to enjoy. The O Antiphons are a collection of short chants used in the last seven Vespers services of Advent in the Western Church tradition.
Three Ways Creativity Connects Us With the Creator
“He who sings prays twice.” This beautiful maxim, attributed to the early church theologian Augustine, is used to describe the beauty of song in worship. But the phrase gestures to a deeper meaning: Through our bodies—lungs and vocal cords and muscles—our prayerful thoughts are made manifest in the world itself. In all our various acts of creativity, we engage in this same process: letting our ideas become enfleshed in our reality.
Michaelmas and The Dream of Gerontius
September 29th is Michaelmas, or the Feast of Michael and All Angels. In premodern Europe, the feast marked the passing of seasons as summer’s warmth gave way to the shadow of winter. Saint Michael was invoked, along with all the angelic host, to aid the faithful as they brought in their harvest. To these communities, angels were guardians of the righteous, seeking their well-being and defending them from evil.
Rural Church Growth
I’ve pastored a very rural church for well over a decade. Our town has about 1,000 people and will never grow until Jesus returns. 38 people attend our worship on Sundays. Here’s a quick list of what we’ve done to grow our church, and what I’ve done to survive pastorally. We’ve had evening worship services with other denominations, rotating them throughout the year. When you get your congregations together for worship, people will like you, but this has not grown our church.
How to Get Our Girls Into Scripture
Quarantined during a 72-hour radioactive iodine treatment, Erin Weidemann had what she calls “a dark moment of the soul.” Hours before, she had swallowed a pill that doctors hoped would kill the aggressive cancer metastasizing in her chest and head. At 26, she faced the reality of her own mortality. “My battle with cancer was a five-year period where I was discovering a closeness with the Lord,” says Weidemann.
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