Thresholds, In-Between, Paradox, and Liminality

by | May 15, 2021 | Uncategorized

I lay down in the early afternoon of a sunny and cool Chicago Saturday. Anita and I were with our son, Eliot, and his fiancé, Tatyana. Later that day, the four of us would join several of Eliot’s and Tatyana’s friends for a relaxed informal dinner party at the home of...

Telling the Story (Stories) of the Last Year

by | Apr 28, 2021 | Uncategorized

Photo by Eugenio Mazzone on Unsplash How do we tell the story of the last year or so? One way is to focus on a series of disruptions in public health, justice, education, economics, and politics. They were earthquakes that shook our foundational confidence, and the...

Gifts We Need and Can Give

by | Apr 22, 2021 | Uncategorized

Rodin It—the deaths, other losses, and griefs of the pandemic, racial polarization, economic devastation, political division, and “Christian” nationalism—has been and is hard, really hard. We probably won’t know how difficult things have been until later, when we can...

Holy Saturday

by | Apr 3, 2021 | Uncategorized

Dead, forsaken Jesus. Eerie silence from heaven to the grave. Smug Empire. Self-satisfied religious Establishment. Horrified, hiding, denying, and betraying men break their vows to follow. Trembling, tenacious women stay true through the end.   In God’s great...

In, not of, Lent

by | Feb 25, 2021 | Uncategorized

My ways of observing Lent changed significantly in 2014. Early in that year, I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma. Treatment (infusions/injections, steroids, and a daily chemo capsule) began on Ash Wednesday. Following that afternoon’s initial treatment, I went to...

Power, Greatness, and Servant-Leaders

by | Feb 1, 2021 | Uncategorized

It’s not enough to say that “leaders should be servants,” because all of us serve someone or something, even if it’s only ourselves. As the well-known Bob Dylan lyric puts it: Indeed you’re gonna have to serve somebodyWell, it may be the devil or it may be the...

Another Way

by | Jan 12, 2021 | Uncategorized

On the calendar of Christian worship, January 6 is Epiphany; it is a day to acknowledge that Jesus is the in-the-flesh manifestation of God’s dreams for the world and to celebrate that he is an embodied revelation of the Divine’s unifying and healing love....

The Opposite of a Dumpster Fire

by | Jan 2, 2021 | Uncategorized

What’s the opposite of a dumpster fire? Of doom-scrolling? Of trolling? What would the best-year-ever be like? Long ago, I drove away from a town in which I’d experienced a lot of pain. As I crossed the city limits and, a few minutes later, the county line, I looked...

A Mid-Advent Lament

by | Dec 12, 2020 | Uncategorized

Rodin Museum, Paris There’s so much to lament these days. There are also reasons to be thankful, of course, and the practice of gratitude is both a sign of, and a way toward, wholeness. In ways we don’t often recognize, lament is such a practice, too. The Psalms,...