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Be Opened

What follows is the text for my sermon at First Presbyterian Church of Asheville this past Sunday.  It’s based on the second part of the lectionary Gospel for the day, Mark 7:31-37.I’d like for you to meet my boyhood friend, Jimmy. He lived down the road,...

Deep Convictions, Strong Opinions, and Tender Love

There’s more than a year to go before the presidential election, and, already, I am weary with the campaign. When I can manage simply to view the candidates as performers, some talented and others not so much, and hear their speeches as scripts in an over-the-top...

Two-A-Days

This past Friday afternoon, after two full days of New Faculty Orientation, I took a long walk around the Mars Hill University campus.  I thought about—and prayed for—students soon-to-return (or coming for the first time) to campus, and of the hopes and fears...

Not Walking Alone

Barnes and Noble Bookstore at the Asheville Mall occupies two floors; the upper floor circles the lower, is bordered by a high and clear rail, and provides an open view to the floor below.The children’s books and toys are on the upper floor. Last week, as I was...

Immunity? Protection?

Last Monday, I was at Duke’s Adult Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinic for an appointment near the one-year anniversary of my stem-cell transplant.  Over the last month or so, in ways which have surprised me, I have been reliving the hard and surreal experiences I...

Looking for Joy

Until 2007, July 24 was simply another day in summer, a usually hot and humid day, perhaps cooled for a time by a late afternoon thunderstorm. There was nothing in my experience which made it noteworthy.  In 2007, my father died on this day.  Complications...

Hey, Look at Me

My friend Bob and I were sitting on the bleachers just outside the racquetball court and trying to catch our breath between games. A group of race-running, soccer-ball kicking, tricycle-riding, and twirling-dancing preschool children spread-out across the basketball...

The River, the Desert, and the Road Ahead

In March of 2013, on my 56th birthday, I spent some time beside the French Broad River.  In my journal, I wrote:  I want to know more about the power of gentleness, the courage of vulnerability, the expansiveness of honored limits, the serious work humor can...

Liberating Limits?

Walls shelter or confine. Sheltering walls can make a home—a haven and refuge from the world.  Confining walls can make a jail cell—a place of fear and isolation. How we feel about walls depends very much on what kind they are, why we live within them, who put us...

Independence and Interdependence

On this Independence Day Weekend, I’m pondering the necessary tension between independence and interdependence.  It’s a tension which the Apostle Paul described, as I mentioned yesterday, in Galatians 6: “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will...