Christianity

Dylan: “Gotta Serve Somebody”

November 28, 2016 by William Eaton

You may be an ambassador to England or FranceYou may like to gamble, you might like to danceYou may be the heavyweight champion of the worldYou may be a socialite with a long string of pearls But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeedYou’re gonna have to serve somebodyWell, it may be the devil or it may be the LordBut you’re gonna have to serve somebody — Bob Dylan, “Gotta Serve Somebody,” 1979 Bob Dylan, who first achieved […]

Categories: ZiLL • Tags: Bob Dylan, Christianity, Jesus, popular music, The Bible

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Nones Crossfit Spirituality

December 11, 2015 by Walter Cummins

Seeking Spirituality in a Secular World An article in the New York Times about people who enjoyed a religious experience in a gym led me to think about the range of human quests for some sort of spiritual connection, and beyond that what such a spiritual connection might mean. The Times article, “When Some Turn to Church, Others Go to CrossFit” by Mark Oppenheimer, reports on Harvard Divinity School researchers’ attempts to define religiosity in contemporary America. Their project, […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: André Comte-Sponville, atheism, Christianity, God, Hortus deliciarum, religion, Wittgenstein

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31 October 1517

October 31, 2015 by William Eaton

The same day when little ghosts and goblins haunt the neighborhoods, the Protestant world commemorates Reformation Day. The rest of the world may not celebrate, but it should take note of an event that started a process that shaped the Western world. On 31 October 1517 in the tiny German university town of Wittenberg, population about 2,000, the university beadle attached a printed announcement to a church door. In accordance with university conventions, the announcement, in Latin, the language used by […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: Catholic Church, Christianity, Luther, Reformation, religion

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Testifying (John the Baptist, Flores, MacNeice)

July 31, 2015 by William Eaton

1 A man seen on a Sunday—a very hot and humid Sunday. He’s slight, middle-aged, not quite shabbily dressed. He’s standing under a highway underpass, one of the hundreds if not thousands of highway underpasses in Connecticut. (And may I say, too, that Connecticut is one of the worst states to try to drive through. Suburban sprawl, highway-widening projects. In North Carolina some political figure came up with the horrible idea that highways should keep being built until every North […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiLL • Tags: Christianity, God, Jesus, poetry, Quaker meeting, religion, sports

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Reading a poem/A poet reading

January 10, 2015 by sjzeteo2015

By Stuart Johnson Davidson College, down the road from me in North Carolina, just announced that its alumnus Charles Wright will be appearing on campus next month, so I pulled his 2014 collection, Caribou, off the shelf. For those who don’t keep track, Wright is the current US Poet Laureate. I have been reading the poems in Caribou with the thought that Wright’s appearance is likely to be for a reading of his work, and the poems in that book […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: Charles Wright, Christianity, poetry, reading

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