Wordlessness and the Witness of Listening

by | Sep 24, 2016 | Uncategorized

I’ve ransacked my mind and heart, looking through stacks of ideas and poking around in boxes of feelings, to find something helpful to say about the police shootings of African-American men in Tulsa and in Charlotte.I’ve come up empty.My search for words has confirmed...

Not-Doing as a Way to do What Matters Most

by | Sep 17, 2016 | Uncategorized

What do we do (or not do?) when we feel hollowed-out and ground-down by life’s pressures and demands?Either George Patton or Vince Lombardi or Aphoristic Anonymous said that “fatigue makes cowards of us all.” Whether or not it always turns into cowards, it is...

Fifteen Years Ago and Now

by | Sep 10, 2016 | Uncategorized

Fifteen years ago this weekend, I began my work as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Asheville. Far more significantly, our nation sustained the worst-ever terrorist attacks on United States’ soil.Those attacks left ongoing grief, anger, and anxiety in their wake....

On Not Settling

by | Sep 2, 2016 | Uncategorized

Do we always have to settle for “it is what it is”—to surrender to the status quo?Too often, it feels like we do.  Inertia, habit, and sameness seem stronger than any hope we have for change.We know, for instance, what happens to New Year’s resolutions. We’re...

Escape Ordinary?

by | Aug 25, 2016 | Uncategorized

Two intriguing entertainment venues have recently opened in downtown Asheville: Conundrum and Breakout. They create and offer adventures of escape, journeys from lost to found, and mysteries to explore.  Participants assume new identities as hostages, questers,...

How We Talk and Who We Are

by | Aug 12, 2016 | Uncategorized

Before much of the new school year goes by, a child will come home with red, puffy eyes, sagging shoulders, and a wounded heart because of some ugly thing someone has said. I hope no one says to that child: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never...

Sometimes and Always

by | Aug 9, 2016 | Uncategorized

Sometimes we do less in order to be more.Sometimes things have to be simpler so that we may deal with complexity.Sometimes we are quieter in order to say more.Sometimes we become gentler as a way of being stronger.Sometimes we lament our way to laughter and grieve our...

Being a Farmer, Being a Christian

by | Aug 5, 2016 | Uncategorized

Farmer-poet-essayist Wendell Berry claims that there are things about being a farmer which can only be known by living on the land, tending to it in-season and out-of-season, watching how the wind sweeps across it, observing how water flows over it, seeing the tracks...

In Sure But Contested Hope

by | Jul 29, 2016 | Uncategorized

My Dad was a salesman who could sell almost anything to almost anybody. As the old clichés have it, he could sell sand to beach dwellers and air conditioning to Eskimos.On days when he was to call on important customers, he had a routine to prepare himself: get up...