For several years I have heard, and used, the quotation, “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” For the longest time I thought William Faulkner said it. He said something else about the past. The past is never dead. It's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence. And to prove we can easily get quotations and their attributions wrong, I thought that was “In the S

It is late July in Northwestern Georgia. The forecast today is for a high of 94 degrees. I have walked my dog already by 9:15, so that he and I can avoid the panting and the perspiration that yesterday sucked us dry of energy. I sit inside with two fans and some indirect air conditioning on me, with no plans to go outside for more than a couple of minutes today. Tomorrow should be better. August is always a little better with the heat here, with shorter days of sunlight and l

I do not consider the poem above to be anti-semitic or anti-Israel. Palestine needs prayer, as does Israel. There may be some hidden meaning here that I am missing, though. The image of a dog may call up the words of Jesus about dogs by the master's table and the response from the non-Jewish woman that even dogs get the scraps. The encounter seems harsh, but I believe it is to be interpreted as a test that a Gentile was coming to him with a request and to see her response. He

For my current devotional reading, I am studying The New Testament and Its World by N.T. Wright and Michael F. Bird. It is a thick, textbook-like tome, and their interpretation of Jesus in his world is meant to bend evangelical world views and smugness, I think, that we know everything about Jesus we need to. He (I assume this is Wright because of the style) closes this chapter (11, "The Death of the Messiah," p. 261) this way: Granted all this, it is worth highlighting how