On Sunday my son-in-law, Anthony Damelio, was ordained at Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. I was honored when Anthony invited me to give the “Charge to the Newly Ordained.” As your father-in-law, Anthony, my charge to you on the occasion of your ordination is born of blood, the vows of marriage, and the blessed obligation […]
Adult Spirituality
The Parable of the Raft
One of the Buddha’s most famous teachings is the Parable of the Raft. In it he likened his teachings to a raft for crossing a fast-flowing river. A man is trapped on one side of a river. On this side of the river, there is great danger and uncertainty; on the far side is safety. […]
Where God Hides
A legend says that, at the beginning of time, God resolved to hide himself within his own creation. As God was considering how best to do this, the angels drew around him. “I want to hide myself in my own creation,” God said. “I need to find a place that is not too easily discovered, […]
Inoculated Against Faith
In some ways, I had a traditional ‘old South’ upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an inoculum of the military ethic that is still with me today: honor, duty, loyalty. -E. O. Wilson I ran across those words this week and stopped. Inoculum is the substance used […]
A Teaspoon of Sand
Ted Ryan, a friend of mine, told me about an experience that goes under the category of “the things a child can imagine.” He was giving his four year-old son breakfast before he went off to work, but the boy was just sitting there. He wasn’t touching his cereal. So Ted says to his son, […]
Frantically Eating Chocolates
“The whole fall, back-to-school just hit me like a truck.” That’s the way a mother described the first days of September as we talked last night. Me too. It all comes on so fast. Summer seems to start gradually, as things wind slowly down. But it always ends with a bang. A gun goes off. […]
The Mask that Changed His Face
In an age of doubt and—worse—of apathy and cynicism, we all struggle to “believe.” We can’t believe what we blindly accepted as a child; many passages from the Bible are either confounding or troubling; taken literally, the Creed is a bridge too far. Faith or spirituality was always presented as a matter of “belief”—what you […]
The God Who is Already Here
There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle, or you can live as if everything is. -Albert Einstein My colleague, Jonathan Thomas, preached a provocative sermon yesterday. He challenged our basic assumptions about God—where God is and isn’t; what God gets involved in; the occasions, moments, places where […]