BY JEDIDIAH PASCHALL
“The wilderness is the route of promise on the way to the land, or the wilderness is unbearable abandonment to be avoided by return to slavery.” – Walter Brueggemann In his book on the parables of Jesus, Kingdom, Grace, Judgement, Robert Capon calls Scripture a treasury of icons that God has given us to mark out […]
Read More” – They who will give an account to him who is ready to judge the quick and the dead. Because it was for this that the good tidings were proclaimed to the dead, that though judged in the flesh according to human beings they might live in the spirit according to God.” 1 Peter […]
Read MoreGo, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. TS Eliot – The Four Quartets: Burnt Norton I There are nights where I get so ripped at the seams that […]
Read MoreBaptism with Fire and St. Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Resurrection: “…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Matthew 3:13) The fires of hell are a reality that cannot be dismissed in any honest reading of the New Testament. However, as I have stated throughout this series on Universal Salvation, the issue […]
Read MoreAs I continue with the series of Christian Universalism (apokatastasis), I want to point out this excellent article by Fr. Kimel over at Eclectic Orthodoxy. Only when we begin to grasp some of the historical reasons why Universalism, which according to credible sources was the majority position in the early church, has been rejected. While […]
Read MoreAs I continue to work through this series on Christian Universalism, I think it is important to reiterate that the classic doctrine of Universalism (termed in Greek as apokatastasis) as developed by the Church Fathers and later Christians in the broad-stream of orthodoxy (Eastern, Catholic, Protestant) do not deny the existence of hell. Rather, the […]
Read MoreI have a conflicted relationship with suburban life, not because the suburbs are any more or less defective than the city, but because I have a conflicted relationship to life in this world. There’s beauty and ugliness, beauty in the ugliness, and ugliness in the beauty I suppose. The trick is to find hope and […]
Read MoreImmemorial mountains cradle the suburban roads smoldering in the vale, Summer mirages’ liquid dance, And rhythmic beating through black arterial lines In the shadow of sacramental signs of consumptive desire – empty promises of sexed satisfaction and satiated hunger on every noisy corner, That rip like razor-wire through lungs empty of the sacred Breath. Still […]
Read MoreOh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, to sins of will, Defects of doubt and taints of blood; That nothing walks with aimless feet, That not one life shall be destroy’d, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made […]
Read MoreI am working on a larger piece of poetry, which will take me a good deal of time to complete. I enjoy the poetic process because, if nothing else it affords me the opportunity return to my most natural state; namely the exploration in that liminal zone where I can test the limits of sanity […]
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ST. JUDE'S TAVERN 