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With Truth and Grace

Lately, I’ve felt that our culture is like a house full of teenagers left alone for too long without any adult supervision. There’s a lot of noise. The television is on, music is blasting, and nearly everyone is talking to, or texting, someone who isn’t in the room....

Thanksgiving and “Church”

Many of the Thanksgivings and Christmases of my boyhood were spent in Huntington, WV. Both sets of my grandparents lived there, as did a wide circle of other relatives. On the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving, as soon as Dad got home from work, we’d pile in the...

Living in and by Love

Since my college days, I’ve had a recurring dream. On a rainy Sunday night, my car breaks down in a small, rural south Georgia town. The only gas station that boasts a real mechanic won’t open until Monday morning. The only available food is nearly day-old fried...

Random Thoughts in Search of a Common Thread

The best answer to the idea that Joseph had the pyramids built to store grain might be Steve Martin’s classic and hilarious “King Tut. Tut was, Martin sings, buried in a “condo made of stone-a” which is a closer-to-the-facts description of a pyramid...

Testing Students, Evaluating Myself

Though I’ve been teaching and supervising Doctor of Ministry students for more than a decade; and have, as a part of that work, read and evaluated an array of personal exploratory essays, theological reflection papers, and summaries of ministry projects, last week, I...

The Possibility of Change

We all know the overworked cliché which defines insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  As worn and familiar as it is, we keep proving its essential wisdom.It happens in the groups of which we’re a part. With...

Freedom and the Weather of the Heart

Yesterday’s bright blue sky, streaked with long and thin white clouds, the shimmering sun, and the slight cooling breeze were such welcome gifts after days of ponderous grey air and pouring rain.  With the clinging fog and veiling clouds evaporated from the...

Broken Things and All Shall Be Well

In my dream, I was scheduled to play golf with a friend.  Never mind that I haven’t played golf in over a decade, gave my clubs away a few years ago, and wore-out my golf shoes by using them for yard work (they aerated the lawn while I walked!). I scrambled...

The Challenge and Gift of Time

Many of us have a troubled relationship with time.Carl Honore wrote an interesting book, In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed, the idea for which came to him as he rushed through an airport and saw a book entitled The...