When I was a boy, my mother hung a framed copy of Rudyard Kipling's "If" at the foot of my bed. I'm sure it was the first poem I memorized.

Kipling's opening lines come to mind a lot lately:

   If you can keep your head when all about you   
       Are losing theirs. . . .

If indeed! 

Spend a moment or two online, and you'll have to take cover to avoid the avalanche of bouncing, rolling crania. 

Everyone's gone nuts. Panic, anger, shrill resentment, scorn and insult - these are the main modes of discourse in today's "public square."

Can we keep our heads in a world gone mad?

At Theopolis, we believe the answer's Yes. Theopolis exists to help Christians keep their heads perched right where they belong.

To remain stable, focused, and fruitful in the face of lunacy, we need deep roots, long horizons, and a place to stand. 

Scripture gives us our temporal coordinates. It stocks our memories with Eden and exodus, tabernacle and temple, exile and return, priest, king and prophet.

Scripture excites our expectations, so we hope that a stone will grow into a mountain, a tiny seed sprout into a spreading tree, all kingdoms of the earth become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.

The liturgy gives us a place to stand - also to kneel, to bow, to rise, to sing, to shout, to sit at the King's table, which He spreads before us in the midst of our enemies.

"If . . . If . . . If" begins every other line for three stanzas, and then Kipling gets to the consequent:

   Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
       And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Guided by biblical memory and hope, ballasted by the liturgy, the church is a light, a non-anxious presence, heir of the world.