Humility and Growth

by | Apr 21, 2010 | Uncategorized

At the heart of all genuine faith and all authentic change and conversion, whether sudden or gradual, dramatic or quiet, is humility. Spiritual growth and maturity require us to acknowledge that there are limits to our own strength, goodness, and knowledge. We need to...

Heavenly Muse

by | Apr 14, 2010 | Uncategorized

In his novella “Remembering,” Wendell Berry includes this moving poem/prayer that I often have in mind as I move to the pulpit or lectern to speak or pick up a pen or press my fingers to a keyboard to write: Heavenly Muse, Spirit who brooded on The world...

“I am not dead”

by | Apr 5, 2010 | Uncategorized

Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple tells the story of Celie, a poor black woman whose husband, Albert, is violent and abusive. Albert isolated Celie from her family, censoring the mail so that she never heard from them. Celie’s sister, Nettie, a missionary in...

Leadership?

by | Mar 29, 2010 | Uncategorized

You realize, don’t you?, how much ambivalence most of us have about leaders and leadership. Warren Bennis, for many years president of the University of Cincinnati and a noted expert on leadership, wrote a fine but troubling book a few years ago entitled Why Leaders...

Between Us and Time

by | Mar 17, 2010 | Uncategorized

All is not well between us and time. Time flies when you’re having fun; but, at the best moments, it seems that time stands still. But, the best moments aren’t necessarily the easiest moments, so that some people remember hard times as good times. Most of those who...

Love is a dialgoue

by | Mar 11, 2010 | Uncategorized

Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th Century priest who founded the Jesuit order and whose Spiritual Exercises have guided people, for centuries now, into a deeper and more richly imaginative praying of the Scriptures, wrote these fine words about love:Many people think love...

Wrestling with, and lifting, the human heart

by | Mar 5, 2010 | Uncategorized

Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’...

Will to Worship

by | Feb 26, 2010 | Uncategorized

We were created for worship and fashioned for praise. Tortured genius and brilliant critic of the church, Frederick Nietzsche, believed that human beings are driven by a will to power. We are, Nietzsche said, desperate to have a sense of mastery over the sinister,...

Paradoxical Faith

by | Feb 18, 2010 | Uncategorized

Paradox permeates the Christian faith. God is vaster and more mysterious than the universe but as near to us as our own breath. God is higher and holier than we can conceive, but also more loving and compassionate than we can imagine. God is unity and community, one...

Jesus is the “human face” of God

by | Feb 14, 2010 | Uncategorized

I borrowed this phrase from the Anglican John A. T. Robinson: “the human face of God.” Here’s what it means to me: When I look at Jesus, I see what a human being is meant to be: fully alive and fully engaged. Reynolds Price has said that, in Jesus, we...