Author Archives: davetcourt

Chloe Zhoa is a master at capturing the intimate nature of the human story and experience set against the backdrop of the larger narrative of the natural landscape and world that affords these stories and experiences their sense of place and meaning. Having recently picked up and read the novel on which this film isContinue reading “Nomadland: Chloe Zhoa’s Cinematic Portrait of The Beauty of Communion and The Process of Grief”

I can still vivdly remember the trip my wife and I took to Italy, our first time to the Country and our first time overseas together. After scoring flights through an auction sight for $200 a person round trip, we jumped at the opportunity. The only catch was we had to fly out of Chicago.Continue reading “Italy, Buildings, Architecture and Meaning: Allowing the Transcendent to Shape the Present”

“And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.”Mark 15:33 Mark’s passion narrative has been deliberately structured in three hour intervals. This moment of darkness signifies the final hours of this narrative, telling us that what is happening holds a cosmic (whole “world”) reach. This isContinue reading “Welcome to the Sunrise: Resurrection Faith and the New Creation Story”

I’ve been reading through the passion narrative in the Gospel of Mark this morning as I reflect on the Friday that we call good. The good news of God with us, of the Christ who entered into the suffering of our world and bore the weight of sin in all of its manifestation, all soContinue reading “The Good News of a Good News Story: The Gospel of Good Friday”

FILM LA SAPIENZA (2014) Directed by Eugene Green La Sapienza is not an explicitly religious film, but I think it just might feature one of the most powerful arguments for the notion of faith. At the heart of the film is a discussion about the relationship between architecture and people, with architecture containing both theContinue reading “Month in Review: Memorable Reads, Watches and Listens For March 2021”

As I have often said in the past, the mark of a good book is when I hightlight the  heck out of it. Having just finished Michael Gormon’s The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant: A (Not So) New Model of the Atonement, I’ve got a LOT of highlights fromContinue reading “The Problem with The Theory of Atonement: Making Sense of All the Noise”

And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, onContinue reading “Palm Sunday: Preparing to Encounter the Death and the Resurrecction”

It is often said that in our rush to get to the goodness of Resurrection Sunday we have a tendency to want to move quickly past Good Friday, forgetting that we cannot arrive fully at the Resurrection without first understanding the nature of this Friday that we call good. In reading through the story ofContinue reading “Rereading the Easter Story: How The Triumphal Entry Helps Us Understand the Death and Ressurection”

Remembering is an act of storytelling,  Robert Nash Back at the turn of the calendar year I started to give some intentional focus to a research project on the topic of memory that I had been sitting on for quite some time. The research project was inspired by a particular experience I had years agoContinue reading “Irrational People, Irrational Minds: The Unreliability of Memory and the Practice of Meaning Making”

    Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”—Madeleine L’Engle When I first started writing in this space it was an attempt to try and deal with some of the great anxiety I was feeling and experiencing over turning 40. Anxiety is something I have wrestled with my whole life.Continue reading “Chasing the Moon: The Crippling Nature of Anxiety and the Healing Power of the Imagination”