by Guy Sayles | Jan 6, 2013 |
My father believed the old proverb “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” He didn’t like to see me sitting still, unless it was at the dinner table or in church. Otherwise, he wanted me to be doing something constructive. If he didn’t think I was...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 24, 2012 |
In his compelling and controversial novel, The Testament of Mary, Colm Toibin, imagines how Mary felt while carrying Jesus in her womb: I know that my own happiness in those first months, when I was with child, felt strange and special, that I lived in a...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 18, 2012 |
Like many other preachers, my sermon yesterday drew, in part, on the terrible story of Herod’s “slaughter of the innocents,” as I attempted to speak about the unspeakable shootings in Newtown, CT. A young family was decorating their home for...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 5, 2012 |
Writer Sue Monk Kidd grew up among Baptists in the south and, like most of the rest of us who did, she learned to pay very little attention to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Kidd says that she was “virtually unaware of Mary, except at Christmas, when she turned up...
by Guy Sayles | Nov 30, 2012 |
Years ago, I attended a tedious and boring conference which I was delighted to see come to an end. I was ready to get back home; but, as bad luck would have it, my flight was delayed for a couple of hours as we waited for violent thunderstorms to subside. ...
by Guy Sayles | Nov 19, 2012 |
In 1991, Van Morrison released Hymns to the Silence, a two-CD tour de force that seems at least party autobiographical. Morrison’s folk-tinged and bluesy rock and roll, on this album, as across his whole career, has an indefinable “something” that carries him...
by Guy Sayles | Oct 26, 2012 |
I agree with theologian Robert McAfee Brown who said: “There has not been a moment in the church’s life when it has not stood in need of reformation, redirection, and renewal at the hand of God” (The Spirit of Protestantism, p. 21). That was true 495 years...
by Guy Sayles | Oct 14, 2012 |
Whether it’s the actual truth or not, when someone asks, “How are you doing?” we’re most likely to answer, “Fine.” My guess is that our next most common responses are “busy” and “tired.” Almost twenty years ago, in her book When Giants Learn to Dance, Harvard...
by Guy Sayles | Oct 3, 2012 |
In an old Peanuts cartoon, Lucy asks Charlie Brown, “Did you ever know anyone who was really happy?” Before he answers, that effervescent Snoopy dances into the scene—head flung back, ears streaming in the wind, a wide, giddy grin lighting up his face. He vibrates fun...
by Guy Sayles | Sep 20, 2012 |
If we priced and valued words as we do commodities, on the basis of supply and demand, then words would be dirt cheap these days. There are more words available in the cultural marketplace than ever before: round the clock television news and talk...
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