Tony Woodlief | Author

Faith and Life

Be it resolved

I read once that the historian’s admiration for authority affects his assessments of civilizations past — that oppressive regimes, with their monuments to state power, will draw his eye and his imagination more readily than a nation of citizen farmers. That’s probably true for most people; we can’t help but watch the parade’s prancing exhibition of the …

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Listen

Wife tells me that when baby Isaiah went for his two year-old check-up this week, the doctor announced that he was to receive two shots. “Two shots!” Isaiah shouted with glee. “Two shots!” Either he thought he was going to play guns with his brothers, or he believed shots is a new kind of candy. …

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Weary

Sometimes the words don’t seem like they’ll get close to the truth of anything, and so I just stop writing. That’s not completely true; I’ll write fiction perhaps, because those people in the stories inside my head haven’t yet worked themselves into corners where the words are like sunfaded fabric or covered-over grass or the sigh …

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Stumbling

You yearn for a holy place because, in the time between waking unable to recall where you are, and drifting again into the half-sleep that is all you’ve known for the longest time, you stand in the darkness of your sterile hotel room, peering into a mirror to see that you are nothing like what …

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Past the words

This weekend I lived at beautiful St. Fidelis Church, situated unexpectedly on the Kansas plains. Oddly enough, I never went inside the church proper, but I’m told there’s a large mural behind the altar, of Fidelis being butchered by Calvinists. It made me wonder how many people have been dispatched to the merciful arms of God …

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Hopefulness

Andy Crouch offers a thoughtful essay on the eventual fruits we might, if we are lucky enough not to find an easy way out, glean from the current economic crisis. Here’s an excerpt: “The stark contrast between what I experience among Christians anywhere else in the world—and not just the ‘Third World,’ because Canada and …

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Sound Familiar?

From Walker Percy’s 1957 article, “The Coming Crisis in Psychiatry”: “We all know perfectly well that the man who lives out his life as a consumer, a sexual partner, an ‘other-directed’ executive; who avoids boredom and anxiety by consuming tons of newsprint, miles of movie film, years of TV time; that such a man has …

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Dormez-Vous?

If you’ve ever had people put their hands on your head and shoulders and pray over you, then you know what it is like, sometimes, to read the words some of you write to me. Caleb has been reading a great many history books. Last night he asked if I have ever been beaten with …

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Jesus Wept

I’ve realized lately that my patience with bureaucracy and hypocrisy and politics has nearly reached its limit, which is unusual for me. I like to think that as a student of organizations I have more patience with them. But as I lay in bed yesterday morning, wishing it was Saturday instead of Thursday, pondering the …

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Seeking Home

The word home has a connotation both immediate and distant. A home is intimate, that place where we belong, where they let us in the door whether we deserve it or not. As something one does, home has traditionally been distant, implying that one is going to it, or that one is being remotely guided …

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The Storm

The two younger boys crept into our bed in the black morning, driven by a snarling storm. They curled into me, shivering, as if I am a safe harbor. There is no keeping out the storm; this is what I thought. The cool peaceful evenings line themselves up between the vibrant days, and we forget …

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The Shape of Eleven

She would have been eleven today. I would have made her favorite meal, which is spaghetti, and we would have had cake, probably something with pink frosting, and I would have eaten a slice even though I gave up sugar for Lent, because if God understands anything about us, he understands this. I would have …

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P’u-Hua Fei Hua A flower and not a flower; of mist yet not of mist; At midnight she was there; she went as daylight shone. She came and for a little while was like a dream of spring, And then, as morning clouds that vanish traceless, she was gone. Po Chui Translated by Duncan Mackintosh …

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