Monsters at the Margin

VIRTUE IS FOUND at the margins of society more often than at its centre. If this is so, Mary Shelley's Monster is a real find! Her creature is an isolate of great sensitivity, kindness, and insight. Contrary to James Whale's 1931 film of the Creature as a lumbering dolt, Mary Shelley's Monster was modeled on Rousseau's notion of humanity as the "noble savage." The nobility of the Creature is evident as he unveils his chronicle to Victor Frankenstein upon the icy crags of Mount Blanc. Meet Frankenstein's Creature

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Resurrection: Beyond Ghosts and Ghouls

MORE THAN A fact or doctrine, the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth embodies personal and historical hope. While reading a variety of viewpoints on the resurrection, I have been alternatively confused, comforted, restored and unexpectedly devastated by this theme. Internally and subjectively the resurrection is an encounter with the epicenter of meaning and significance. Without a living encounter and reliance on the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, spirituality amounts to little more than armchair speculation. This strikes at the root of my fears because my intellect hesitates to believe that a person whose bodily functions had ceased, whose tether to

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Who Am I?

As is my obsession, I read enormous selections, and some whole treatments of who Jesus could possibly be culturally, theologically and historically. There were loads of interesting but mostly disappointingly partial treatments. Nothing gave me anything like the assurance I needed to take the step toward saying who Jesus is for me.

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A Tale of Two Cities

Stealing from the title of Dickens' book A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Watershed's story could be equally called A Tale of Two Wisdoms: God's Wisdom and Human Wisdom (1991-2015). I tell this story not in order to disparage the intellect or learning from a human point of view but rather to show how we might have used these two wisdoms incorrectly. Why and how wisdom gets expressed in our lives is what I have in mind.

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Luke and the Plan of God

Luke is a Gospel of Reassurance. It describesthe suffering of discipleship, that Christ is forming us, that we are called to be witnesses of redemption and forgiveness to the world and that we are called to participate, through listening to the Spirit, in the creation of the Kingdom. On Wednesday we began our look at the book of Luke, our focus for 2007. Luke is the best book for learning about discipleship and learning how to live in community. There are a number of different sources that will inform our study including commentaries from Darrell L. Bock (The NIV Application

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