"I love the desert fathers. They are so neat. Especially because my life is all about maximizing comfort — like, my house is cozy, my dog and I have little spots on the couch that’s just shaped like our butts cause we just love being on the couch. And these guys are like, 'Well, I spend a lot of time not eating, and weaving baskets until my fingers bleed, but could I spend more time not weaving baskets until my fingers bleed?'"
"Look, say what you will about Christianity, but the Bible teaches little girls that they can grow up to drive spikes into the heads of Canaanite generals, and there’s huge value in that. Cause there’s sometimes that really goofy straightforward talk about what you can do, or not, “because the Bible and women.” And I really like kind of playing with that and going “Fine, then the lesson I got from this is that you can drive spikes in people’s heads.”
I don’t remember who it was now who wrote this, but I loved how someone talked about how, for an hour and a half, the entire church was Mary Magdalene. In between when she goes to the tomb and has to go find the disciples, she is the entire church. And I love that. I love that for an hour and a half, a woman was the church."
I was reading The Infinity of Hours, which is about the last order of Carthusian monks before the order was changed in the sixties, and one of the monks wrote a letter home and was just bitching about Thomas Merton. I was like, “Of course other monks had opinions!” It did not occur to me, but of course he was this huge, famous monk in the sixties — of course other monks are going to be like, “Well, he needs to spend more time monkin’, and less time writing his famous books.” And [the monk] was like, “I’ve never thought too much about Thomas Merton, I think he needs to decide if he’s a celebrity or a monk.” And it’s just so charming, this little monkish bitchery.
Tennessee's House of Representatives voted 69 — 25 on April 18 to authorize the state's attorney general to sue the federal government for not consulting with the state on the placement of refugees.
The state similar efforts in Texas and Alabama, but becomes the first state that would sue on the grounds of the 10th amendment, which dictates that all powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government in the Constitution belong to the states.
The true purpose of the dinner party, and the reality behind Will’s suspicions, is a slow-burning, tense tale that works best the less the viewer knows going in. Suffice it to say that several characters come to the film with emotional baggage, and while Eden and David’s apparent bliss seems to have cured them of their problems, the source of that bliss — and its results — aren’t exactly as advertised.
The Invitation presents audiences with characters trying to move on from terrible experiences. It also presents two different ways of approaching the healing process, and the failing of a community to support those in pain.
Muslim groups say Sen. Ted Cruz and his Capitol Hill staff refused to see them during an annual lobbying day in which hundreds of Muslim constituents met with their senators and representatives.
On April 18, while Cruz was in New York, campaigning in advance of the April 19 presidential primaries in that state, a group of 14 Muslim Texans marking “National Muslim Advocacy Day” went to the candidate’s Washington office.
Three Syrian families flown to Rome by Pope Francis are calling their trip from the battle lines of a five-year civil war to safety in the shadow of the Vatican a “miracle” journey.
The heart of Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood, with its picturesque cobbled streets and vine-covered walls, could not be farther from the asylum-seeker camp the Muslim families were living in just three days ago.
The Taliban detonated a truck bomb in Afghanistan’s capital city on April 19, reports The New York Times.
The police chief of Kabul said that 28 are reported dead, but because of the 327 wounded, the death toll will rise.
Built in 1735, the Garrison Church was where pre-war Germany’s Protestant kaisers, kings, and generals went to pray for victory, entering amid military ornamentation and sitting among the captured flags of defeated armies. Prussia’s legendary King Fredrick the Great was buried there.
Have you ever read scripture from an agrarian perspective? We tend to read scripture with an anthropocentric perspective, but what if we read it with the land and animals in mind first? In her book An Agrarian Approach to Scripture, Ellen Davis invites us to consider reading Scripture with the land and animals at the forefront.