March 27, 2002

In a new book on Genesis, Gary A. Anderson focuses not on the textual origin of the story—the customary focus of historical-critical study—but on how the story has been received and retold, imaginatively and liturgically, in Jewish and Christian traditions.

When she was ten years old, Deora Bodley was in a play called Compukids in which she sang a song written by her father: “My daddy always said / when he’d put me down to bed: / Rest easy, little one, and don’t you cry. / For there’s nothing there, you see, / that can harm you, trust in me.” The song, “Ceiling-Sky,” with words by Jeff Mooring, appears on a Web site celebrating Deora Bodley’s life. She died when United flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11. She was 20, and a junior at Santa Clara University.

Plaque flak: Folks in Lauderhill, Florida, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, planned a celebration of the life of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. for Saturday January 19. As part of the event, the townspeople decided to honor the actor James Earl Jones by presenting him with a plaque. Depicting Dr. King and other famous blacks, the plaque was intended to congratulate Jones for his efforts in furthering King’s concerns. Merit Industries of Georgetown, Texas, was engaged by Adpro, a Lauderhill business, to prepare the plaque.

One of the objectives of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent pro-Western diplomacy is to reduce instability along Russia’s southern borders. In the troubled area to the north of Afghanistan are five predominantly Muslim countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. When they were part of the old Soviet Union, communist propaganda constantly proclaimed that Islam was dead. But communism misjudged Islam’s staying power, just as it did Christianity’s.

I had already attended two colleges when one day I wandered into a third. The sign above the door of an old mansion in Fort Vancouver, Washington, read “Evergreen State College.”

“What seminars are you offering this fall?” I asked a woman behind the desk. “Reality,” she responded. “Sign me up!” I replied.

Stephen Long has written an engaging and frustrating book on the relation of theology and economics. Baptized by Anabaptists, educated by evangelicals and ordained in the United Methodist Church, Long teaches at UMC-related Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, where he is co- director of the Center for Ethics and Values. Just as there is diversity in his background, there is irony in his current position.

I recently took my five-year-old son to see Return to Neverland, the sequel to the classic 1953 Disney animated film Peter Pan. The story is similar to the original, except that this time around it is Wendy's daughter, Jane, who takes the magical journey to help Peter and Tinkerbell fight Captain Hook. (Not surprisingly, the war-painted Indians, led by Princess Tiger Lily, are missing from this version.

When we first see him, Hank Grotowski (Billy Bob Thornton) is a spiritually comatose corrections officer who seems to have inherited his bigotry, like his line of work, from his father, Buck (Peter Boyle). A housebound invalid, Buck gripes bitterly when he sees a couple of black children stroll across the lawn to pay a visit to Hank's son Sonny (Heath Ledger), and grumbles that there once was a time when colored people "knew their place." Hank compliantly scares the children off with a rifle.