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Author Archives: awtraughber
Middle Earth as Myth (not allegory)
One of the things you hear most when reading Tolkien (or reading about Tolkien) is whether or not The Lord of the Rings is an allegory. Tolkien, of course, flatly denied the charge, but that hasn’t kept decades of readers … Continue reading
“When the Gods Returned to Earth”
One of the things you find on almost every copy of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring is a quote from C. S. Lewis. “Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron; here … Continue reading
Who You Say We Are
This past weekend saw the release of Steven Curtis Chapman’s latest, a worship album called Worship and Believe. The two terms in the title hang together awkwardly. We might think that the reverse is the appropriate order: believe and worship. … Continue reading
Closing the Door on Downton Abbey
This Sunday sees the final episode of PBS’s Downton Abbey. While the show never quite lived up to its first season promise, it was an enjoyable weekly visit to another time and another place. The episode airing Sunday night is … Continue reading
Formation and What You Love
These past few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to work through the concept of formation with some of my peers. It’s been an interesting journey made even more interesting by the thoughts of James K. A. Smith. Smith’s new book, … Continue reading
Bouncing Back with the Agents of SHIELD
It feels like forever-and-a-day ago since the mid-season finale of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. The first half of the season was a great example of accelerated story-telling, with a number of major twists and turns taken in what would take … Continue reading
Dwelling and Indwelling
One of the things I like most about N. T. Wright’s image of the biblical story like a five-act play is how it holds the story together while also emphasizing the underlying connective tissue. One such tissue is found in … Continue reading
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Generating Hope
Every spring, I ask my students questions from an old “discussion questions for youth groups” book. This past week, one of the questions concerned what period of time students would live in if they could choose a pre-2000 life. The … Continue reading
To Market, To Market (or: we are the data)
The spring of great reading has sprung. The local Barnes & Noble had a few copies of Douglas Rushkoff’s new book, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus. In this video, he talks about markets (medieval) and marketing (way too modern). … Continue reading
Independence and Inheritance
Sometimes it feels like we’re all living in a kind of (time) bubble. Contemporary society floats above the mire of history untethered, we think. In this selection from For Common Things, Jedidiah Purdy might beg to differ: What we should … Continue reading
Space Enough, and Time 