When error comes to us all spry and apple-cheeked, it promises hope to the naïve. But soon it will move to Florida and spend its senior moments in a rocker. We were promised a generous orthodoxy, now we are told that if we don't share their hope, we have no hope at all.

Brian McLaren's blog turned out to be a shameless exercise in self-promotion consisting of the trivia of one man's life and mind told in two basic sentences: those that contain the phrase my new book and those that don't. This is leadership for a generation which violently rejects crass commercialism?

On the other hand, here is the work of another woman courageous and vulnerable enough to express her heart through creative means. Here is the eye of a woman with more to tell us about the world than a church bus full of Fundamentalists.

Ironic in a cruel way, is it not?

The World

By day she woos me, soft, exceeding fair:
  But all night as the moon so changeth she;
  Loathsome and foul with hideous leprosy
And subtle serpents gliding in her hair.
By day she woos me to the outer air.
  Ripe fruits, sweet flowers, and full satiety:
  But thro' the night, a beast she grins at me,
A very monster void of love and prayer.
By day she stands a lie: by night she stands
  In all the naked horror of the truth
With pushing horns and clawed and clutching hands.
Is this a friend indeed; that I should sell
  My soul to her, give her my life and youth,
Till my feet, cloven too, take hold on hell?

---Christina Rossetti