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Sometimes and Always

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

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

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...

Binary Choices?

“It’s a binary choice.” That’s how a lot of people account for the vote they plan to cast for Trump or Clinton.  Given the vast ideological differences between the “bases” of the two major parties, it was inevitable that the choice would present itself as a stark...

Human Community, Human Jesus

“Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so.”Like most children raised by Christian parents in the south, I learned that song before I learned to sing my ABCs. It’s true that the Bible tells us that Jesus loves us, but it wasn’t from the Bible that I first...

Best Coffee, Best Sermon

Two Sundays ago, at the Sheetz convenience store in the west end of Huntington, I stood in a longish line, waiting to pay for a cup of coffee and anticipating the drive back to Asheville. Behind me was a middle-aged man who had a giant soda (“pop” as they say in...

Exemplars, A Resource for Lay-Leadership Training

One of the projects I had the opportunity to work on last year came to fruition with the publication, this month, of Exemplars: Deacons as Servant and Spiritual Leaders (Smyth and Helwys). Elizabeth Allen and Daniel Vestal, of Mercer University’s Baugh Center for...

Healing Wisdom

An enduring symbol of medical practice is the physician’s caduceus; it’s a winged staff, with two serpents twined around it.Robertson Davies reminded me that the Greek myth of Hermes is this symbol’s origin. Hermes came upon two warring snakes, “who writhed and fought...