[I have watched in horror over the past couple weeks at the continued violence against the black community in the United States and in Canada. In the interest of amplifying black voices, over the next week I'll be promoting black theology past and present, with as little commentary from me as possible. May we all … Continue reading Songs of Lamentation and Longing: Hearing Black Spirituals
I've been thinking a lot lately about Teddy Roosevelt's famous quote about "the man in the arena," which has been repopularized over the past decade by Brene Brown's use of it in Daring Greatly. It goes: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or … Continue reading The Arena
On a morning when I awoke to find that my country was on the verge of closing its final international border to unnecessary travel, I couldn't help but find the opening words of the Psalm portion a little jarring: "He strengthens the bars of your gates." (Ps 147.13). Indeed. Never in living memory have we … Continue reading Contagion
Because we are meaning-making creatures, it is no surprise that many cultures across the world and throughout history have extended this to finding symbolic meaning in numbers. Even in Western North American culture that doesn't have a historical numerological system of its own, we have a strong predilection for multiples of ten, and call the … Continue reading A Time for Every Matter under Heaven
Story is everything. Everything is story. Story-telling is a fundamental part of being human. We all do it, every day, whether we are aware of it or not. We are wired to make meaning, to seek patterns and connections between people and events, causes and effects. This is a critical and wonderful part of what … Continue reading Changing the Story
Matthew Root 