Today is the birthday of Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of the most beloved Christian poets of all time and the poet whose work has spoken to me most personally. Hopkins was a Victorian Era poet, educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and influenced by the Oxford Movement led by John Henry Newman, John Keble, and Edward Pusey. This movement, …
The Beloved and Doomsayers
While having a conversation today with a colleague, he shared these marvelous words from Brennan Manning with me. In the midst of our current angst-ridden ethos, I found Manning's words particularly poignant. Certainly this is not the only answer to how we address the apparent chaos of these days and times, but it is still …
Solzhenitsyn on Life, Death, and Humanism
I came across this stunning paragraph from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 1978 commencement address to Harvard University when re-reading Stanley Hauerwas' book A Community of Character the other day. As I was working on my message from this past weekend at Eastbrook, I found Solzhenitsyn's words a helpful encouragement for the right direction I was going. If humanism were …
Continue reading "Solzhenitsyn on Life, Death, and Humanism"
The Warmth of Other Suns (Book Reflections)
When I was at a gathering with ministry leaders focused on the multi-ethnic church over a year ago, Professor Soong-Chan Rah recommended that anyone wanting to better understand the historical background of race relations in the United States should read Isabel Wilkerson's book The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. I finished …
Continue reading "The Warmth of Other Suns (Book Reflections)"
Excerpt from “Choruses from ‘The Rock'” by T. S. Eliot
This weekend in my message, "Wisdom in the Darkness," on Job 28 as part of our "Finding God in the Darkness" series, I quoted an excerpt from T. S. Eliot's work "Choruses from 'The Rock.'" Someone asked me for the exact reference after the sermon so I'm posting it here for your enjoyment. O world of …
Continue reading "Excerpt from “Choruses from ‘The Rock'” by T. S. Eliot"
Matthew Erickson 