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​When a Kingdom Forgets Itself: Part Five

Earlier, I suggested that Homer invites us to judge a civilization by what happens at its thresholds. Now the lens narrows. We return to Ithaca. The kingdom appears unchanged. The palace still stands. The fields are still cultivated. The servants continue their work. The forms of public life remain in place. But the reader knows that something is profoundly wrong. The absence of Odysseus has created more than a political vacuum. It has revealed a moral one. The suitors have occupied the palace, but they have done something even more destructive than seizing another man’s house. They have forgotten what a house is for. In Homer’s world, a household is not merely private property. It is where guests are welcomed, justice is practiced, children are formed, and obligations are honored. The household is the smallest school of civilization. The suitors consume it instead. They feast without gratitude. They compete without honor. They mock restraint. They turn hospitality into entit...
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​Part Four: At the Threshold of a Civilization

I suggested that Homer measures a person’s character by what happens when a stranger arrives at the door.   He is also asking a  larger question. What if hospitality measures not only individuals, but entire civilizations? We should be reading The Odyssey with that question in mind. Its most memorable societies are distinguished not by their wealth or military power, but by the way they receive outsiders. Consider the Cyclopes. When Odysseus and his companions enter the cave of Polyphemus, they expect the customary obligations of host and guest. Instead, they find a world without hospitality, without assemblies, without laws, without shared life. Each Cyclops, Homer tells us, lives for himself and his own household. Polyphemus does not simply violate the customs of hospitality. He cannot imagine why they should exist. The result is not merely cruelty. It is isolation. The opposite appears among the Phaeacians. Odysseus arrives exhausted, nameless, and utterly depen...
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The Stranger at the Door

(Part three of a multipart series on Nolan's The Odyssey ). If the early Church Fathers were right, we should not be surprised to discover moments in The Odyssey where Homer sees something true about the human condition. One of those moments is hospitality. What the Greeks called xenia is far more than good manners. It is one of the moral pillars upon which Homer's world rests. Zeus himself bears the title Zeus Xenios—Zeus, the Protector of Guests. He watches over the relationship between host and stranger, making hospitality not merely a social custom but a sacred obligation. The responsibilities belong to both parties. The host receives the stranger before asking many questions. Food is offered before names are exchanged. The weary traveler is given water to wash, a place to rest, and the safety of the household. Only then does the conversation begin. The guest, in turn, is expected to respect the household, receive generosity with gratitude, and depart without exploiting th...
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Learning to Read Homer

(The second reflection in a series) If Paul opened the door, the early Church Fathers walked through it. The first Christians did not inherit a world in which the choice was between reading the Bible or reading Homer. They inherited a culture in which Homer was the beginning of nearly every education. Greek children learned to read from Homer. They memorized Homer. They absorbed their moral imagination through Homer. The question, therefore, was unavoidable. What should Christians do with this inheritance? Some argued that pagan literature should simply be abandoned. After all, Homer's world is filled with many gods, heroic vengeance, and values that often stand in sharp tension with the gospel. Others recognized that rejecting everything Greek would also mean rejecting much of the language and culture through which the Christian faith itself was being proclaimed. The Church gradually discovered a third way. Justin Martyr gave it one of its most memorable expressions. He argued tha...
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Leaving the Theater

(Part 1 in a multipart series on Nolan’s The Odyssey) When the lights came up after Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey , I found myself thinking about how some might be tempted to dismiss Homer because he is a pagan poet whose world is populated by quarrelsome gods and heroic violence, or tempted merely to celebrate him as one of the greatest literary geniuses of all time, leaving much that might be noted unexamined. Neither response to Homer has ever satisfied the Christian tradition. From the beginning, Christians have lived in conversation with cultures they did not create. The first believers inherited the Scriptures of Israel, but they also lived in the cities of the Roman Empire, spoke Greek, read Greek authors, and educated their children in the classics—either intentionally or unintentionally. They could, therefore, neither ignore that world nor simply baptize it. So they learned another way. They listened. They asked where truth might already be shimmering beneath the surface of ...
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Prayers of the People and Final Blessing for Proper 11 Year A

  Prayers of the People   The people stand or kneel.    The silences are kept long enough for the people to offer their own prayers, either silently or aloud.   Let us pray for the Church and for the world God loves.   I ask your prayers for the Church throughout the world; for our bishops; for all ministers and people; and for this congregation. Pray that, led by the Spirit and freed from fear, we may live as children of God and bear faithful witness to our Redeemer.   Silence   I ask your prayers for the nations of the world and for all who exercise authority. Pray that rulers may turn from arrogance and violence, govern with justice and compassion, and remember that God alone is sovereign.   Silence   I ask your prayers for peace and for the welfare of the world; for people divided by hatred, warfare, or suspicion; and for all whose lives are threatened by the judgments of others. Pray for patience in a world where wheat and weeds gro...
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One Ship or Two? American History and the Stories We Tell

James Traub's recent review in The Atlantic of David S. Reynolds's Two Ships asks a question that reaches far beyond a single history book. Are Americans one people, or have we always been two nations occupying the same territory? The image is compelling. Reynolds argues that from the beginning America has been carried by two vessels: one devoted to liberty, constitutional government, and equality; the other shaped by slavery, racial hierarchy, and domination. The two ships sail the same waters but pursue different destinations. It is an arresting metaphor. Like all good metaphors, it does more than illustrate an argument. It changes what we see. But perhaps the most illuminating question is not whether Reynolds is right. It is why this metaphor has become so persuasive. Over the past generation, Americans have increasingly argued about the nation's "true" story. Samuel Huntington described America as fundamentally an Anglo-Protestant nation. The 1619 Project as...
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