August 10, 2010

After giving the keynote address at a recent conference on “ecological civilization” attended by more than 60 scholars and government officials from China, theologian John Cobb joined conferees in a group photo. Then, in a spontaneous break in the schedule, Chinese participants took turns standing or sitting near Cobb while associates and friends snapped their pictures.

It’s Thursday morning, November 9, 2006. It’s ten after nine. I’m at my desk, working through Ecclesiastes for a book I am to write. The verse I’m working on goes like this: “Better a handful with quietness than two fistfuls with toil and a chasing after wind.”

In the middle of this verse the phone rings. This is Dr. S. Your biopsy has turned out positive, and it’s bizarre. It’s a rare, aggressive cancer of the prostate. I’m to come in for a CT scan.

In 1984, Marvel Comics created a new nemesis for Spider-Man. The character would be a symbiote, inspired by what parasitologists call the weaker of two organisms inhabiting the same space. The weaker organism can draw life from the stronger, and in the most dramatic cases it siphons off its host’s nutrients before the host realizes what’s happening. The symbiote survives, but the host is seriously weakened.

Geoffrey Black has completed his first year as president of the United Church of Christ at a time when the UCC has been emphasizing youth and technology as well as theology and social justice. Like many mainline denominations, the UCC’s membership has continued to decline in numbers. Black is the second African American to lead the UCC.

Who have been your models in ministry?

It is evident from the lush opening credits, which recall the stylish script of postwar European cinema or the 1950s American melodramas of Douglas Sirk, that the Italian film I Am Love is going to have plenty of “sweep.” What we can’t surmise from the first half hour—which includes both a gorgeous montage of Milan in winter and the meticulous planning of an extravagant dinner party in an ornate villa—is just how deep this family drama will dig, revealing secrets buried for decades.