Last Sunday I was greeting people as they walked out of church and into a beautiful spring morning. There were scores of people around me, spirits were high, people were lining up for coffee, laughing and talking. That’s when Melissa walked up to me. I grasped her hand, smiled and said how happy I was […]
Nature/Creation
Old News
Today when I went out to get the paper, I was smitten by the weeping cherry tree in the front garden. Its blossoms were like huge pink puff balls, swaying in a light breeze. It was May Day. The sun was vernally strong. But I was not here to admire a tree. I was on […]
A Lump in the Throat
I sat last night by an open window, and a cool breeze swept suddenly across my face. I heard the orange leaves rustled in the Maple. The papers on the desk levitated momentarily and the hair on my arms stood up. I felt suddenly as if I were out of doors, but the outside had […]
Love and Work
It’s Labor Day weekend, and most people won’t think a thing about labor. Work is just what we do to put bread on the table or maintain a lifestyle. Like everything else, we tend to do it mindlessly. But it would be hard to overemphasize the importance of our labor. Freud said, “Love and work […]
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 […]
Wildness is Necessity
If summer is come, June 21st, can vacation be far behind? Unless we’re in for a stay-cation, that means getting out of town, finding our way somewhere else. When we live in town and work in the city, we often head for someplace far from “civilization,” remote, wild. I always develop palpitations when I reach […]
The Beautiful Impossible
Unbelieving types often wonder how in the world we can believe in “miracles” that seem so impossible. What’s “impossible” anyway? I was just reading some galactic facts that blew a brain circuit. Get a load of this. “Fourteen billion years ago the entire universe we observe today—containing upwards of 100 billion galaxies—was contained in […]
The Lorica of St. Patrick
As the world celebrates St. Patrick’s day, we pause to remember Ireland’s great patron who has been adopted by the world. Born in Roman Britain, kidnapped by slave traders from Ireland prowling the Welsh coastline, enslaved for years as a shepherd in Ireland, Patrick had no formal education, but his searing experience created within him […]