Unemployed Theologian

Prologue: The Jesus Prayer goes like this: "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me." Remember that. It will be important. Act 1: Delilah I have officially decided to name my new car Delilah, because she is on the one hand beautiful and on the other a harlot who has betrayed me. The list of pickles she's gotten me into is getting longer and more maddening by the day, and the memory of one of the more harrowing of said pickles is still fresh, having taken place not two months ago on the way back to Newberg from an interview in Portland. You guys tried that picasa photo editor? Really easy way to make your car look like it's in a comic book. The interview was for a position in Young Life's Associate Program, a dream job of mine except that it would require me to live wherever they might place me, rather than in Springfield where I had resolved to go after graduation. My interviewers and I reached this impasse at the end of the interview, them telling me I wo...

My laptop used to freeze up when I played videos on it, and has overheated and shut down sporadically throughout its too-short two-year lifespan. It doesn't do either of those things much anymore, and realizing this has from time to time elicited in me a pang of hope that perhaps it has resolved these difficulties on its own without needing me to spend money I don't have to fix it. Similarly, when my car leaks oil less rapidly, squeaks less obnoxiously one week than the week before I have to talk myself out of believing it has recovered from its injuries of its own accord. Machines simply don't, can't heal, in spite of how convenient it would be for us if they could. Healing requires life, organic cells, breath, a revelation which has got me thinking more deeply than I'm used to. What is this peculiar business of healing? I am daily marveled by how much of the human experience we take for granted, as if we're numb to the magic of it all. We are indeed fearfull...