The funeral home in town has recently changed its name. It is now a “Life Celebration Home.” We are a death-avoidant culture. And the church is, often, little better. Many are deep-sixing funerals for “Life Celebrations.” The irony, the unintended sadness, is that the more we try to banish death, the more troubled about death […]
Fear
Tell The Truth–Before Your DNA Does
What if a total stranger tells you he thinks you’re his second cousin? When my daughter Maggy decided to do genetic testing with 23andMe, she was hoping to learn more about her ancestry. What she didn’t expect was that submitting her saliva for testing would provide the missing link in another man’s search for his […]
The Agony That Sparks Ecstasy
in every breathif you’re the centerof your own desiresyou’ll lose the graceof your beloved but if in every breathyou blow awayyour self claimthe ecstasy of lovewill soon arrive in every breathif you’re the centerof your own thoughtsthe sadness of autumnwill fall on you but if in every breathyou strip nakedjust like a winterthe joy of […]
Rescue Me
Five people are trapped in a titanium tube on the floor of the Atlantic ocean, and I can’t get them off my mind. I am constantly checking my news feed. Sonar is picking up tapping sounds. Hope surges, then I read how unlikely it is that help could arrive in time. In some real way […]
When Home Isn’t Where You Left It
I think of South Dakota, the place I left on my way to college, as Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegone: “The little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve.” But, as I found on my visit last week, time has not unremembered my old home. It’s both the same as ever, and yet dramatically […]
What Are You Willing To Suffer For?
Palm Sunday—the Sunday of the Passion—is a good moment to stop and consider this question. When I tried to answer it, my first thoughts leapt to the heroic. What cross would I die on? What great cause could demand, as the hymn sings it, “my soul, my life, my all”? Once I recognized the ego […]
What Are You Running Away From?
On July 13, 1798, William Wordsworth returned to a specific place along the banks of the Wye River that flows through England and Wales. He sits above the murmuring waters, leaning against a dark sycamore tree. Years have passed and now he sees again the orchard trees, the steep and lofty cliffs, the wreaths of […]
What Are You Chasing?
Renowned preacher and storyteller Fred Craddock swears this happened to him: He was visiting in the home of one of his former students after graduation, and after a great dinner, the young parents excused themselves and hustled the kids off to bed, leaving Fred in the living room with the family pet—a large, sleek greyhound. […]