Movies for Preaching
Heaven (2002)
Directed by Tom Tykwer. Written by Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krysztof Piesiewicz. Music by Arvo Pärt. Starring Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, and Remo Girone. 97 mins. Rated R. For all of their importance in living, there are very few confession sequences in films, at least good ones. The best known, perhaps, is implicit. George Bailey in…
Reading for Preaching
The Four Loves
“There is a delicious illustration of really good domestic manners in [Laurence Sterne’s] Tristram Shandy. At a singularly unsuitable moment Uncle Toby has been holding forth on his favorite theme of fortification. ‘My Father,’ driven for once beyond endurance, violently interrupts. Then he sees his brother’s face; the utterly unretaliating face of Toby, deeply wounded,...
No Future Without Forgiveness
“One of the most blasphemous consequences of injustice, especially racist injustice, is that it can make a child of God doubt that he or she is a child of God.”
Miss Manners’ Guide for the Turn of the Millenium
Bad manners are limitless in their forms of ingenuity: eavesdropping, interrupting, asking how much your host’s crystal set cost, namedropping, prying, confessing too much, complaining, giving unsolicited advice, asking professional advice in a social setting, asking “Why do you have so many children?” asking “Why don’t you have any children?” asking “Did you have a...
No Future Without Forgiveness
‘”. . . this third way of amnesty [the TRC] was consistent with a central feature of the African Welstanschauung–what we know in our languages as ubuntu, in the Nguni group of languages, or botho, in the Sotho languages.” What is it that constrained so many to choose to forgive rather than to demand retribution,...
Crime and Punishment
Marmeladov’s drunken prospective for divine forgiveness at the end: “and when [the judge] has finished with everyone, then he shall say to us: ‘And ye also,’ he’ll say, ‘come forth! Come forth ye winebibbers, come forth ye weaklings, come forth ye profligates!’ And we will all come forth and stand there unashamed. And he shall...
“Being Mugged”
On Saturday, July 19, 1997, on the way to the Staten Island Ferry in lower Manhattan, Catherine Stimpson was mugged by a young man, who ran up from behind her in a hit-and-run mugging, and who cracked and chipped her humerus (bone from shoulder to elbow) in the act. Everything changed. She had been independent....
Preaching Connection: Forgiveness