http://barach.us The Blog According to John Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:25:01 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Year after year, I intend to post, early in January, a list of the books I enjoyed most during the previous year. Year after year, that list gets delayed. It’s March already, but here at last is the list of the books I enjoyed most in 2009, listed ... http://barach.us/2010/03/05/books-i-enjoyed-most-in-2009/ A couple of weeks ago, I read W. H. Lewis's Levantine Adventurer: The Travels and Missions of the Chevalier d'Arvieux, 1653-1697. W. H. ("Warnie") Lewis was the brother of C. S. Lewis and his area of expertise was the history of seventeenth century France, a period he referred to ... http://barach.us/2009/12/21/levantine-adventurer/ Mark 3:20-35 is one of Mark's typical sandwiches, in which a story starts, gets interrupted by a second story which relates to it in some way, and then finally comes to its conclusion. Here, we are told that, having heard about Jesus' behavior, some of "His own people" come to ... http://barach.us/2009/12/08/whos-standing-outside/ A reminder: I’ve prepared these psalms for our liturgy, trying to be as accurate in my translation as possible. The alternation between plain text and bold is for responsive reading. I invite feedback on the translation! A psalm. By David, When he was in the wilderness of Judah. God, my Mighty One you are. Early ... http://barach.us/2009/12/04/psalm-63/ We've all heard it said that "you can't turn back the clock." Obviously, that's true. Even if you regret what you did in the past, you can't go back in time and do things over differently. But that's not what people mean when they trot out this ... http://barach.us/2009/12/03/turning-back-the-clock/ A reminder: I've prepared these psalms for our liturgy, trying to be as accurate in my translation as possible. The alternation between plain text and bold is for responsive reading. I invite feedback on the translation! For the director. On Jeduthun. A psalm. By David. Only toward God is my soul silent. From him is ... http://barach.us/2009/12/01/psalm-62/ Thanks to Daniel Foucachon, there are now a number of videos of a Christ Church psalm sing on YouTube.  Not, I hasten to add, the Christ Church that I pastor but our sister church in Moscow, Idaho.  Enjoy! "Before Thee Let My Cry Come Near" (from Psalm 119) David Erb's version of ... http://barach.us/2009/11/20/psalm-singing/ Those who don't perceive beauty in the face of a Down's syndrome person are blind to all beauty or are so fearful of difference that they must at once turn away from every encounter with it.  In every face — in even the plainest and the most unfortunate countenances — ... http://barach.us/2009/11/17/imago-dei/ We get at the meaning of baptism not by ignoring the properties of water but by musing on those properties.  Eucharistic theology properly emerges from considering the meaning of meals, of bread and of wine, of broken loaves and full cups.  So, too, we get to the rich and richly ... http://barach.us/2009/11/16/luxuriating-in-the-letter/ Pagans say that matter has always existed, whether they are primitive pagans ("the cosmic egg") or Greek pagans ("the co-eternity of matter and form") or modern scientific pagans ("the Big Bang").  They refuse to accept that God could and did create matter out of nothing.  This would ... http://barach.us/2009/09/19/no-god-no-judge/