A couple of rules I live my life by: Use the lectionary as an opportunity to read scriptures that are easy to skip over. Don’t embarrass myself or anyone else by writing about sex. Normally, these two don’t come into conflict. But I’m writing a daily series of devotions, and today’s readings include some verses … More The With-God Life: Song of Songs
On the last full day of our January travel course on World War I, we take our students to Munich’s modern art museum and ask them to write about whichever work best reflects what’s on their minds at the end of three weeks of studying total war and genocide. If I’d completed that assignment myself, … More Europe in Ruins: A Photo Essay
The third of the three short meditations I contributed to a Hanging of the Greens service last month. Merry Christmas to you all! It was December 1863, and America’s bloody Civil War had entered its third winter. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was grieving: two years before, his wife had died in a fire; less … More The Ringing of Bells: A Christmas Meditation
It was the fall of 1993, and I was a freshman at the College of William and Mary. One night I answered a knock at our dorm room door to find a group of three very attractive women, looking through their facebook (note to readers younger than 30: I mean that they were holding a booklet … More What Do Movies Get Right and Wrong about Teaching?
A couple more posts you might have missed during the quiet summer months, both having to do with 20th century war poetry that’s less familiar to most of us. Just over 6000 American soldiers are buried outside the French village of Fère-en-Tardenois, at Oise-Aisne Cemetery. The most famous was killed by a German sniper ninety-five … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Forgotten War Poetry
You wouldn’t expect a Baptist Pietist university in the American Midwest to be anything remotely like a hotbed for interest in the Middle Ages, but there’s been a mini-revival of matters medieval here at Bethel University. Leading the charge is church historian Chris Armstrong, who has branched out from his interests in Wesleyan and Holiness … More A Baptist Pietist University Gets Medieval
If I asked you to name a poem from the First World War, or even the name of a poet who participated in that war, you could probably do it. At the very least, you might recall fragments of “In Flanders Fields.” Or names like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Now, name a poem from … More “Where Are the War Poets?” WWII in Verse
Just over 6000 American soldiers are buried outside the French village of Fère-en-Tardenois, at Oise-Aisne Cemetery. The most famous was killed by a German sniper ninety-five years ago today: a sergeant in the New York National Guard named Joyce Kilmer. So we were informed by the cemetery superintendent when our group visited Oise-Aisne last January … More “I think that I shall never see…”: Joyce Kilmer as War Poet
Earlier this month Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) presented an evening program focused entirely on classical music written by French and English composers during and right after World War I. Here’s the playlist if you’d like to order any of the pieces (for February 7th; the WWI music ran from 8-9pm). For the occasion Classical MPR … More WWI in Classical Music
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the year 1918, the guns of the Western Front finally fell silent. And Susan Owen of the English town of Shrewsbury received a telegram informing her that her son Wilfred had died one week before, while leading his men in battle in … More Remembrance Day
The Pietist Schoolman 