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Christmas Morning, Christmas Mourning
Sunday, December 25th, 2011Today we awoke to a Christmas Day for the picture books. We are in Anchorage, Alaska, and the trees are covered with inches of fresh snow from the night skies. The mountains behind my sister’s house are straining to be seen, but we know that they are lurking behind the clouds. I’m not sure whether [...]
Old Jesus probably would’ve puked
Monday, December 19th, 2011Those are Holden Caulfield’s words, not mine, from J.D. Salinger’s book The Catcher in the Rye. He finds himself at Radio City Music hall for their Christmas festival. I’m excerpting the whole Passage of Interest: I came in when the goddam stage show was on. The Rockettes were kicking their heads off, the way they [...]
OMG Under The Tree
Friday, December 9th, 2011OMG loves to encourage people to ask the theological questions. And there are a lot. Some days there seem to be more questions than on others. I am speaking from experience. For individuals, couples, or groups who are curious about gaining more knowledge, about clarifying beliefs, about identifying new congregational directions, about wondering out loud, [...]
St. Homobonus: Patron Saint of Business People, Tailors, and Not the Poor (Which May Be Instructive)
Monday, November 14th, 2011Below is a link and then the full text of a piece I wrote for our Sioux Falls local paper, the Argus Leader. It was published this last Saturday. http://www.argusleader.com/article/20111112/LIFE/311120037/St-Homobonus-clarifies-money ____________________________________________ For the same reason that I savor the change of winter to spring to summer to fall to winter again, and the rhythm of the [...]
“The Bible Tells Me So!”
Tuesday, November 8th, 2011Except when it doesn’t. My eye caught a recent CNN blog post about President Obama putting on his preacher’s hat. A few days’ back, President Obama said, in effect, that God doesn’t want us to eat free lunches, which clearly means that God endorses a particular provision of his jobs bill. (As an open disclaimer, I’m [...]
The Religious Faith of Atheist Extremists
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011So let me be clear about a few things up front: 1. I do not believe that people who do not believe in my notion of God–or any other notion, for that matter–are going to hell. 2. This conviction translates into really, honestly, having no drive to convert anyone to Christianity away from some other [...]
Raised or Razed from the Dead? Reminder of Upcoming OMG Event
Friday, August 26th, 2011Seats are still available for the weekend conference entitled Raised or Razed from the Dead? Please consider joining OMG on the Augustana Campus on September 23 and 24th as we consider how different Christian theological systems, or frameworks, end up in different places (so to speak) about life (or not) after death. We’ll meet from [...]
“She” Magazine Publishes “The Right Questions: Anna Madsen and OMG: Center for Theological Conversation”
Monday, August 22nd, 2011A special thanks to Lori Walsh for crafting this beautifully written piece in the September issue of She Magazine, as well as to Connie Sweatman, Murray Haar, and Carl and Kerry Schmitzer for their contributions to it. The Right Questions: Anna Madsen and OMG: Center for Theological Conversation
Raised or Razed from the Dead? Weekend Workshop to Consider What Happens When You Die
Monday, June 20th, 2011Come join OMG on September 23-24 for a workshop about heaven and hell. We’ll look at several different theological systems of belief, and how they shape their believers’ views about heaven and hell. The agenda will not be to stake a claim on one conclusion or another, but will be to better understand why different [...]
The saints behind June 19, June 20, June 22, June 23
Sunday, June 19th, 2011This week is a personal doozy. June 19th: 7 year anniversary of the accident which killed my first husband, and which gave Karl his awful traumatic brain injury. June 20th of that year (June 19th this): Father’s Day. That year, I had actually bought ahead of the day a fancy Swiss Army knife for Bill [...]
