by Guy Sayles | Sep 8, 2010 |
We eventually learn that there isn’t much hope for us without forgiveness. Without forgiveness, we are bound to our failures, trapped in our guilt, and locked-up in isolation, with nothing to hold onto but our anger. That’s why, I think, the now-aging rock and roll...
by Guy Sayles | Sep 1, 2010 |
Walter Wangerin’s charming fable The Book of the Dun Cow is set in a chicken coop. One of my favorite scenes has the rooster Chauntecleer try to figure-out who has been stealing and eating the hen’s eggs. His prime suspect is John the Weasel, who has a long track...
by Guy Sayles | Aug 23, 2010 |
From time to time, I am drawn back to this brief poem by William Stafford. He offers wise words about wisdom. It’s not easy to be wise about wisdom, since, when we presume to be wise, we are often, at just those moments, blinded by our own folly; or because it’s hard...
by Guy Sayles | Aug 20, 2010 |
Did you hear about the monkeys who forgot how to climb and swing through the trees? Near the center of the country, there is a Dutch zoo where the orangutans had been kept from the trees for so long that they could not remember how to do what orangutans naturally do....
by Guy Sayles | Aug 10, 2010 |
The writer of Hebrews said: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is trusting that there is more to life than meets the eyes, but faith is not being gullible and unthinking. Christians are not like the...
by Guy Sayles | Aug 2, 2010 |
Success of any kind—more money, greater achievement, more recognition, more praise, and, especially, more power and influence—can (it doesn’t have to, but it can) put us in a precarious place. Success can turn us in on ourselves. We begin to believe our own...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 22, 2010 |
I recently read Martin Laird’s Into the Silent Land: An Introduction to the Christian Practice of Contemplation. Laird teaches at Villanova University, and he draws, in this book, on his academic specialty, patristics (the early centuries of the church,...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 15, 2010 |
I am slowly working my way through Sara Maitland’s intriguing memoir of her exploration of solitude and silence, A Book of Silence. Maitland is an accomplished writer, known primarily for her novels, who writes with a kind of musical grace. In in A Book of...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 12, 2010 |
Yesterday’s sermon explored Jesus’ familiar Parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus told the story as part of a conversation with a “lawyer” (a teacher of Torah, the Law of Moses). Early in that conversation, Jesus and the teacher agreed with each...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 2, 2010 |
James Dixon is a friend who lives in metropolitan Washington, D.C. and serves as pastor of a very vibrant African-American church. When I worked as pastor of a church in the same area, our two congregations would, from time to time, worship together and share in...
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