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Right Now The Best
In his 2022 album American Heartbreak, Zach Bryan (an American multi-award-winning country/rock singer-songwriter) presents a compelling critique of the prevalent ‘what is next’ culture. A culture that is focused on the future and is never satisfied with the present. In this context, people are always looking to and striving for the next thing, whether that be in a person’s career, personal life, social life, or material possessions. Bryan delves into the societal emphasis on the future, revealing how it comes at the expense of the present moment. This is one of the most honest songs that gets at one of the most corrosive effects of the current culture. Bryan (2022)…
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Reflections on “Pastoral Ethics and Belief Baggage: A Critical Look at Animal Symbolism in Witchcraft” by Claire Ayelotan
Claire’s piece can be read here: https://practicaltheologyhub.com/?p=1298 Fear and the Desire for Control Why are our societies so obsessed with witchcraft? While I was reading Claire’s brilliant piece, I could not help but remember that we used the same Christian text – Pope Gregory IX’s papal bull Vox in Rama – regarding fear of black cats (but my piece was on another topic: https://practicaltheologyhub.com/?p=1268). Black cats and other animals are widely associated with magic and beyond natural (or supernatural) powers. Trying to answer the question, we all abhor death, disease, famine, poverty and not being able to get what we want [in Buddhist terms these are part of what is understood as…
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Reflections on “Who do you say that I am?” by Tim Livesey
Published April 25, 2024 Direct Link: https://practicaltheologyhub.com/?p=1404 I was deeply moved by Tim Livesey’s reflections on identity, labelling, and empathy, sparked by his interfaith pilgrimage through Israel and Palestine. His analysis of Jesus’ powerful question—“Who do you say that I am?”—strikes at the heart of how we see, understand, and ultimately treat one another. Tim compellingly shows how labels, whether religious, ethnic, or political, profoundly shape our interactions, often distorting our capacity to acknowledge shared humanity. This reflection comes at a time when the dark shadow of abandonment, death, neglect, hunger, and pain overwhelms innocents caught in a conflict not of their own making, while much of the world watches…
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Rethinking Religious Engagement Through Worship: Airport Prayer Rooms as Sites of Secular Hospitality
Air travel is often accompanied by heightened emotions and elevated stress levels, arising from a range of challenges—from carefully managing check-in times and adhering to airline baggage allowances to the anxieties about confined spaces, turbulence, the potential impact of flight delays and cancellations, or more sinister imaginings of how flights might go wrong. In recognition of the diverse needs of travellers—whether of any faith or of none—many airports now provide a designated prayer or quiet room. It is my own practice, where time and circumstance permit, to make use of these rooms when passing through airports. I do so with a dual awareness: first of a personal concern—whether or not…
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Yet still they speak
Content warning: sexual violence But she said to him, “No, my brother; for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other that you did to me.” But he would not listen to her. He called the young man who served him and said, “Put this woman out of my presence, and bolt the door after her.” (Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves; for this is how the virgin daughters of the king were clothed in earlier times.) So his servant put her out, and bolted the door after her. But Tamar put ashes on her head, and tore the long robe that she was…
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Rites of Passage in Pop and Faith: Lady Gaga and the Formation of Identities
‘Our life consists not only in being but also in becoming’: so runs a memorable line from the Marriage Liturgy currently authorised for use in the Scottish Episcopal Church.[1] Such rites of passage provide opportunities for taking stock of who and how we are in the world, and for reflecting on the ways – great and small, obvious and inconspicuous, collective and individual – we emerge and evolve. Behind this lies an understanding of identity as something dynamic: a transformative journey in which we negotiate what is found (being) and what is fashioned (becoming). Rites of passage is a term coined by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in a short…
