"At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then--and only then--it is handed to you." --Annie Dillard, The Writing Life Odd isn't it, that there is work …
The Ten Great Blessings
On New Year's Eve, I glanced over an email from Bill Hybels, the Senior Pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, in which he encouraged everyone to take time to count their blessings. He told the story of his own family, of their New Year's Eve tradition (if I'm getting this right) of sharing ten great …
An Audience’s Misty Eyes
The eyes of an audience mean more to me than their words. At last night's talkback after Man of La Mancha, there were audience members who were meaningfully lost in the experience of the play, eyes a bit misty. The "magic" of the play was working on them; you could see it. Simple delight was …
Grace and Work
Peter Block, in The Answer to How is Yes, makes a simple pair of statements. "...it is never efficient or inexpensive to act on our values. There is no such thing as cheap grace." Chris Goldman attributes the theology of grace to Paul, pushing back against Paul's naysayers, asserting that without him, our understanding of …
Run, Lola, Run / Choices, Chance, Outcomes
My small film group watched Run, Lola, Run last night, a 1998 German film in which a young woman receives a desperate phone call from her boyfriend. He has lost 100,000 Deutsche Mark, and unless he can deliver this enormous amount of cash to his drug-dealing boss within 20 minutes, he will most likely be …
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JEFF BERRYMAN 