Theology Update for the Week of May 22

Dear friends in Christ,

After the Man and Eve must leave the garden, they dwell in a pre-legal landscape with, however, knowledge of the distinction of the ruler and the ruled. It doesn’t work out well; think of Cain and Abel, and the giants, and the Flood. I hope you can join me in the Sunday theology class, Genesis: Who Are We?,as we seek insight for our nature and circumstance as human beings: Sunday, on the fifth floor of the parish house, at 10 o’clock.

On Monday, May 23, I will repeat the Sunday class at 12:40pm on the second floor. This will be my final Monday class. (The Sunday class will continue through June 19.)

“Thinking Theologically about Love and Disease”: a lecture by yours truly on Wednesday, May 25, at 6:30pm in the church. I intend will reflect on the process of writing a theological memoir, read some excerpts from Losing Susan, and entertain questions; at the end there will be a book signing and reception. This lecture is free and open to the public.

“Good Books & Good Talk” came out of a seminar led by Father Jonathan Erdman and me on The Brothers Karamazov. Since then the seminar has discussed many books, some plays and shorter pieces, mostly but not all fiction. It is an interesting list, and I’m copying it here for your perusal. If you participated in some of these seminars, you might ask yourself which one has most stuck with you. For me, it was A Wrinkle in Time. Towards the end of our conversation, a very quiet voice came out of Susan Austin saying that the three witches were the persons of the Trinity. Immediately it struck us as true, and our whole conversation shifted to a deeper register.

Here are the books:

• The Brothers Karamazov
• The Nine Tailors
• Wise Blood
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
• Never Let Me Go
• Without
• Morte d’Urban
• The Children of Men
• All Hallows’ Eve
• The Cocktail Party
• The Family Reunion
• Emma
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
• Musicophilia
• The Loved One
• The Moviegoer
• Love in the Ruins
• Labyrinths
• That Hideous Strength
• The Abolition of Man
• The Great Divorce
• Diaries of Adam and Eve
• Gilead
• Envy
• Till We Have Built Jerusalem
• “The Dead”
• Peace Like a River
• So Brave, Young, and Handsome
• The Warden
• A Good Man Is Hard to Find
• Descent into Hell
• Silence
• Mr. Ives’ Christmas
• A Christmas Carol
• A Clockwork Orange
• Sara Maitland, Stations of the Cross
• Death Comes for the Archbishop
• Conversations with Poppi about God
• The Little Prince
• “Leaf by Niggle”
• The Man Who Was Thursday
• Dimiter
• “Billy Budd”
• “Benito Cereno”
• Death in the Andes
• Learning to Die in Miami
• Measure for Measure
• Something Beautiful for God
• The Master and Margarita
• Our Town
• Three Men in a Boat
• The Alteration
• Strong Poison
• Our Lady of Alice Ghatti
• Mary Poppins
• Iliad (selections)
• Plato’s Apology
• Antigone
• Plato’s Phaedrus
• The Divine Comedy
• What Happened to Sophie Wilder
• Miss Pym Disposes
• The Violent Bear It Away
• Romeo and Juliet
• Hamlet
• Othello
• Macbeth
• King Lear
• Lost in the Cosmos
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
• The Unnamed
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Peace, Father Austin