by Guy Sayles | Feb 5, 2017 |
This semester, I’m teaching a course called “Christian Ethics in Engagement with U.S. Culture”; sometimes the syllabus and the daily news mirror each other in uncanny ways.This past week, for instance, I had been talking with my students about how the nation’s...
by Guy Sayles | Jan 29, 2017 |
Lately, I’ve been stunned into an uneasy silence. I haven’t known what to say about the last days of Barack Obama’s presidency and the beginning of Donald Trump’s. Even if I could find words to express what I think and feel, I’m under no illusion that what I would say...
by Guy Sayles | Jan 12, 2017 |
“Prophetic Priests, Priestly Prophets” is an article I wrote for the blog of the Center for Healthy Churches. You can see it here or at EthicsDaily.
by Guy Sayles | Jan 9, 2017 |
Three years ago this month, I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma.Two years ago, this month, I ended my work as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Asheville.Last week, my oncologist let me know that the leading indicator of cancer’s activity went down, after having...
by Guy Sayles | Jan 1, 2017 |
After lunch yesterday, Eliot and I took the longish walk to Pere Lachaise cemetery. It’s an eerily beautiful village of the dead, and it was an evocative place to spend part of the last day of the year.As we walked among the tombs and headstones, I pondered...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 25, 2016 |
Sometimes, we say that “Christmas is for children.” That’s true, but only if we remember that this season’s story of divine surprise has the power to make all of us children again—to help us live in childlike openness and wonder. Feel the wind in your hair. ...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 23, 2016 |
This Advent season is the second since I left the pastorate, and I’ve not yet reset my internal clock. Since this past Friday was graduation at Mars Hill, I am on leave until after New Year’s; on what used to be one of the busiest weeks of the year, I’m relatively...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 18, 2016 |
I’ve been trying, without much success, to make sense out of this troubling season in our national life. The trouble has bipartisan (multi-partisan!) sources, but, candidly, my greatest bafflement is about the meaning of Donald Trump’s election for who we are and...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 10, 2016 |
I recently reread Norman Pittenger’s The Lure of Divine Love, a book I first picked-up more than 30 years ago. It’s an accessible and winsome reflection on “process theology,” but the joy of savoring it again had as much to with his style and perspective as with his...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 3, 2016 |
Amid all the Christmas gift-buying and holiday party-going, there may be a moment or two when some people who don’t think much about Jesus will wonder about him. Brilliant and troubled writer David Foster Wallace once asked: “Does this guy Jesus Christ have something...
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