StephenBarkley.com

In Marva Dawn’s Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, I found a great rant about what the church is: To say “I am going to church” both reveals and promotes bad theology. . . . We are NOT “going to church”! We are going to a sanctuary to participate in an order of worship together with the [...]

There were so many piercing observations in Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation, you need to read it for yourself. For now, here’s the sentence that most accurately describes his observational outlook: There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him [...]

While reflecting on the Lord’s Prayer (in Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes), Bailey makes the following observation: It is a common human assumption that the violator of the rights of others must ask for forgiveness before the wronged party can be expected to accept the apology and grant forgiveness. . . . But here Jesus [...]

Unfortunately, Coupland’s new book (Generation A) was nothing to write home about. There was, however, this great insight from the perspective of Zack: an unabashed hedonist. Praying is funny. When you pray, you leave the day-to-day time stream and enter a quieter place that uses different clocks and values things that can’t be seen.

Here’s another simple bit of advice from the Imitation that we can all take to heart: Also study most to eschew and overcome those things that most fervently displease thee in other men.

Here’s a zinger from Charles Foster’s The Selfless Gene: Living with God and Darwin: ID should certainly be taught in schools. It should be taught in the marketing classes. It is a superb example of how, if you package an idea (like shampoo, a skin cream, or toothpaste) in pseudoscience, people will buy it.

I’m reading Benson’s little book on liturgical prayer, In Constant Prayer. In it he lays bare the secret to a successful life of prayer. The secret to a life of prayer, by and large, is showing up. Awesome.

Bach’s always been one of my favourite composers. When I stumbled across a two-volume work on Bach by Schweitzer, I couldn’t resist. In the Second Volume, Schweitzer offered some good comments on the role of various arts in the artist. Every artistic idea is complex in quality until the moment when it finds definite expression. [...]

For a while in North American Christendom you had to sport a goatee to be a youth pastor. That trend has been eclipsed by the soul-patch. True, they’ve been trendy for a while now, but in lieu of any other way to trim your facial hair, they’re still tagging along. Klosterman’s latest book is fantastic. [...]

Chesterton’s got a knack for hiding truth in humour. In one of his first novels, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, he worte this dialogue about an absurd joker who was about to become king. ‘He is a man, I think,’ he said, ‘who cares for nothing but a joke. He is a dangerous man.’ Lambert [...]