In my imagination, I’m seeing this famous scene from the history of the blues (the music, that is…not sadness) where blues legend Robert Johnson stood at the intersection of Highway 49 and 61 and made a deal with the devil, in which he gave away his soul and got guitar prowess in return. Depending on how badly you wish to be a legendary guitarist, that might sound like a fair deal…or it might sound like a lose/lose proposition. In any case, the idea that crossroads are places where the spiritual and material worlds meet is a very old one in many mythologies. This week, I want to invite us to stand a little bit longer at the intersection of wounds and glory. We’ve been talking about the outlines of this idea for a couple of weeks. This week I want to ask why it’s so difficult for us to imagine religion that isn’t “tidied up”, and to consider the possibility that the Christian tradition’s historical insistence that there is a profoundly important relationship between wounds and glory might be a freeing one.