The language of communication may be the language of radio and television; but the language which the artist seeks sensitively to supervise is the language not of communication but of communion: it is that language[…]
Category: Prose
The Theology of Comma-And
In one of my writing classes in college, I was taught to avoid “comma-and” sentences, those sentences that contain two independent clauses, separated by the most-boring-of-all conjunctions: and. There’s no flavor in comma-and sentences. There’s[…]
About Lauren D. Sawyer
I am a Ph.D. student at Drew Theological School studying Christian Social Ethics. Learn more about me at laurendsawyer.com.
Prophetic Artists
But [William] Blake was not a great prophetic artist just because he managed to solve his personal problems through art. Prophetic artists don’t stop at the personal. What they do, you see, is solve something for[…]
The be-riide of Ke-riist
I wrote this post a few months ago, but I decided not to post it until now. For one, I went a little crazy with all the John Updike at first. I don’t need to[…]
About Lauren D. Sawyer
I am a Ph.D. student at Drew Theological School studying Christian Social Ethics. Learn more about me at laurendsawyer.com.
Fiction’s role in escaping and shaping
At church this evening, I spent some time talking with Scott, an M.Div. student at my school, about literature and theology. (I’m aware now there many are deeply interested in this topic. This isn’t just[…]
About Lauren D. Sawyer
I am a Ph.D. student at Drew Theological School studying Christian Social Ethics. Learn more about me at laurendsawyer.com.
The story was not about him
“The oldest book of the Bible is supposedly the book of Job. It is a book about suffering, and it reads as though God is saying to the world, Before we get started, there’s this[…]
Inseparable
As I listen to the silence, I learn that my feelings about art and my feelings about the Creator of the Universe are inseparable. To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for[…]
My Own Private Babylon
Ms. Flannery O’ Connor hits you over the head with a hammer in the best sort of way–you can tell she probably spent a good portion of her life reveling in John 2, when Jesus[…]
About Daniel Buckley
I am a graduate student studying english education in the deep south, and I am endlessly in love with Jesus, Flannery O' Connor, and other social pariahs.
Perichoresis and kenosis in Salinger’s “Teddy”
A few months back, I was reading a New York Times interview with Anne Lamott on her favorite books. When asked what book made her want to be a writer, she answered with J.D. Salinger’s Nine[…]
About Lauren D. Sawyer
I am a Ph.D. student at Drew Theological School studying Christian Social Ethics. Learn more about me at laurendsawyer.com.
Writing is an act of faith
Style takes its final shape more from attitudes of mind than from principals of composition, for, as an elderly practitioner once remarked, “Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.” This moral[…]