Features
Life expectancy: On not praying for a miracle
At my 20-week ultrasound appointment, my husband and I learned that the baby that we are expecting has a fatal birth defect. Sometime very early in his development something went drastically wrong. His skull never formed—the whole top and back part of it simply did not exist. We will probably never find a medical answer to why he developed this way. Babies with acrania have a fairly good chance at living to full term and even some chance of being born alive, but they usually don’t live more than a few days after birth.
Bodies at worship: Formed by liturgy
I learned to install a door one day in small-town Arkansas, on a nondescript tract home with pinkish, mottled brick that was dated even before the mason finished his work. The door was delivered from the lumberyard as a unit, already hinged and hung in its jamb, and my boss, Dave, gave me all the information I needed to install it. He told me how to make sure the studs on the hinge side of the opening were plumb in two directions, and how to tack up shims to correct for the framers’ hurry. He explained that a push on a corner in one direction would effect a logical movement in another.
Health-care option: A Mennonite plan for mutual aid
Parting shots: When church members leave
News filter: Navigating the new media
Funny people
After two likable hit comedies, The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, writer-director Judd Apatow goes the serious route with Funny People. The results are disastrous.
Books
Sitting with Sufis/ The Garden of Truth
Jesus on Death Row: The Trial of Jesus and American Capital Punishment
Life after L'Abri
Bold apology
Betrayal of Spirit: Jew-Hatred, the Holocaust, and Christianity
Departments
Calvin at 500: A reformer's legacy
A vote for gay clergy: In the ELCA
Health money can't buy: Beyond the purview of the market
Old-fashioned love song
News
Century Marks
Pain too shall pass: The great French painter August Renoir suffered from painful arthritis in his later years, and had to strap a brush to his paralyzed fingers to do his creating. When friends suggested he give up painting, Renoir responded, “Pain passes but beauty remains forever” (Paul Coutinho, S.J., in Just As You Are).