Tag Archives: St. Paul

Thrown and Raised at the Same Moment

By Robin Bates | Published: January 27, 2024

Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, notify me at [email protected] and indicate which you would like. I promise not to share your e-mail address with anyone. To unsubscribe, send me a follow-up email. Sunday This past Wednesday was “the Feast of the Conversion of Saint […]

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What No Eye Has Seen, Nor Ear Heard

By Robin Bates | Published: February 5, 2023

St. Paul writes about how our earthly senses are not enough to put us in touch with God. So does Bottom in Shakespeare’s “Midsummer.”

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What Is Conversion?

By Robin Bates | Published: April 30, 2022

For St. Paul, conversion was a blinding light. For Sir John Betjeman, it’s more a stumbling and blindly groping affair.

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Spiritual Lessons from a Happy Hypocrite

By Robin Bates | Published: August 8, 2021

In Beerbohm’s story “The Happy Hypocrite,” we learn that to fake virtue can have unintended consequences.

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St. Paul, St. Thecla, and the Wife of Bath

By Robin Bates | Published: February 22, 2020

The Wife of Bath threads between visions of marriage articulated by St. Paul. In the process, she articulates a far more spiritual vision than that propagated by misogynist monks of the period.

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The Evil I Do Not Want Is What I Do

By Robin Bates | Published: July 6, 2014

Spiritual Sunday  In today’s Episcopal service we encounter a passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans that I particularly like, in large part because it captures an internal conflict that we can all relate to. It also reminds me of a passage from Anthony Trollope’s The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867). First, here’s St. […]

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The Something Inside the Nothing

By Robin Bates | Published: April 14, 2013

Closely examining St. Paul’s “road to Damascus” conversion experience also reveals insight into the poetic process.

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Love, a Bulwark against Desolation

By Robin Bates | Published: February 17, 2013

Toni Morrison expands St. Paul’s vision of love to include erotic love.

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But the Greatest of These Is Love

By Robin Bates | Published: February 3, 2013

First Corinthians 13 may be St. Paul’s greatest poem.

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