“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like. Disclaimer: I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within these articles but have found them thought-provoking.
“16 Evangelical Alliances Call for Gaza Ceasefire, Condemn Hamas” – Jayson Casper in Christianity Today: “As civilian casualties mount in Gaza in collateral damage from the Israeli-Hamas war, 16 evangelical alliances and fellowships are calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. But their November 1 statement of lament, repentance, and condemnation aims deeper. ‘We call on the Church and people of faith to increase and intensify just peacemaking in the region which promotes restorative justice in the region, and to do so while demonstrating empathy and humility,’ the group stated. ‘Peace can only be achieved when the cycles of violence are broken and when perpetrators and victims are set free from their sinful desire for vengeance.’ Signed by World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) regional associations in the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, endorsements included representative bodies from Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Kurdistan, Nepal, Qatar, South Africa, and Sri Lanka, as well as an Arabic-speaking alliance in Europe.”
“The Feminine Way to Wisdom: Learning from Etty Hillesum, Edith Stein, and Simone Weil” – David Brooks in Comment: “Single and twenty-six, Etty Hillesum was an immature and self-absorbed young woman. She was born in 1914 in the Netherlands and lived in Amsterdam with her brother and parents. She kept a diary, and in it her judgments of those around her could be harsh. She wrote that her mother was needy and narcissistic: ‘There was something terribly pathetic about her as well as something bestially repulsive.’ She wrote that her father was weak and lost and had retreated into a world of vague philosophical ideas. In May of 1940, the Nazis invaded. You’d barely know they were occupying Etty’s country from her early journal entries, which are self-focused and largely oblivious to world events. She saw herself with the same hypercritical eye she used to condemn her parents. ‘I am nothing more or less than a miserable, frightened creature,’ she wrote. She saw herself as ‘a weakling and non-entity adrift and tossed by the waves.’ ‘I long for something and don’t know what it is,’ Etty confessed. ‘Inside I am totally at a loss, restless, driven, and my head feels close to bursting again.’ But over the course of 1940 and 1941, something shifted. She had grown up in a non-observant Jewish household, but somewhere along the way she began to pray. One night, she wrote in her journal, ‘I suddenly went down on my knees in the middle of this large room between two steel chairs and the matting. Almost automatically. Forced to the ground by something stronger than myself.’ At first she felt embarrassed and awkward, calling herself a ‘kneeler in training.’ But as the months went by, praying began to feel more natural, even imperative: ‘It is as if my body had been meant and made for the act of kneeling. Sometimes in moments of deep gratitude, kneeling down becomes an overwhelming urge.'”
“A good pastor is hard to find In art at least, the odds of a man of the cloth turning out to be a good guy are slim” – Karen Swallow Prior at Religion News Service: “A good pastor is hard to find — in art, at least, if not life. From the Archbishop in Dante’s deepest circle of hell to Moliere’s titular character in “Tartuffe or The Hypocrite”; from Dostoevsky’s infamous Grand Inquisitor to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s adulterous Rev. Dimmesdale; from Jane Austen’s Mr. Collins to Charlotte Bronte’s Rev. Brocklehurst; and from Harold Frederic’s Theron Ware to Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry, contemptible clergymen abound in imaginative works. Of course, it’s a long-standing truism that immoral characters are more interesting than good ones. Thus, the portrayal of a pastor or priest who is good offers a double challenge to artists. On the other hand, a bad priest or pastor can easily offer a shortcut to ‘interesting.'”
“The Stewardship of Pain (Part I): Knowing through Absence” – James K. A. Smith: “Like Buechner, my life has been a long reverberation of a father who left me in childhood. Not, it should be said, by suicide, as Buechner’s father; mine is still “out there” somewhere, though I’m not sure if it makes the absence better or worse. Comparing grief seems like a grim, misbegotten game. I mention this common absence, instead, because it explains the deep recognition that gripped me when, in The Sacred Journey (1982), recounting his search for a father, Buechner looks back to see that he ‘found fathers galore.’ It is in this context that he gives us this wonderful, expansive vision for All Saints’ Day:
On All Saints’ Day, it is not just the saints of the church that we should remember in our prayers, but all the foolish ones and wise ones, the shy ones and overbearing ones, the broken ones and whole ones, the despots and tosspots and crackpots of our lives who, one way or another, have been our particular fathers and mothers and saints, and whom we loved without knowing we loved them and by whom we were helped to whatever little we may have, or ever hope to have, of some kind of seedy sainthood of our own.
Very much like Buechner, I have been fortunate to find fathers in some of my teachers, but I have also been parented and loved and helped by some teachers from afar, whom I’ve never met except in their books. Teachers who have wended their way into my heart and helped me to feel a little less alone. Fred Buechner is one of those sorts of teachers to me.”
“Delighting in the Great Possessions” – Carla Galdo at Front Porch Republic: “Years ago, my family and I spent several long weekends near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, lodging at bed-and-breakfast inns on farms run by Amish and Mennonite families. We ate pounds of cinnamon baked oatmeal and quarts of the best yogurt I’ve ever tasted; we visited Amish milking barns and goat paddocks; my toddlers romped with kittens and chased geese. We drove straight highways flanked by farmhouses, woodworking shops, and acres of green crops, and stopped at roadside stands for homemade root beer and whoopie pies. As we drove through the countryside, my husband was particularly impressed by the Amish method of stringing clotheslines. Almost every yard featured the diagonally-angled lines, stretching from ground level up to poles nearly ten feet high. He eyed their heavy-duty pulleys, their flapping array of hand-sewn dresses, pants, and shirts, and wistfully remarked how wonderful it would be to have the scent of fresh air lingering in our own laundry. Back then, we lived in a townhouse, bound by the prohibitions of the HOA against all types of outdoor clothes-drying, however tasteful or hidden from view they might be. I had a wistful feeling similar to my husband’s—of seeing things I desired but perhaps would never have—when I closed David Kline’s book Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer’s Journal.“
“Encyclical Letter Laudato Si” – Pope Francis’ letter from 2015 on care for our common home: “‘LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore’ – ‘Praise be to you, my Lord’. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. ‘Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs.’ This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she ‘groans in travail’ (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.”
Music: The Porter’s Gate ft. Liz Vice, “Brother Sun (Giving Glory),” from Climate Vigil Songs
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Matthew Erickson 