by Guy Sayles | Apr 2, 2009 |
Farmer-writer Wendell Berry is a guide to me, as to so many others. Several years ago, writing about learning to see, and so to care for, his Kentucky farm, Berry gave me new ways of thinking about “place” and “community” (church):One’s work...
by Guy Sayles | Mar 27, 2009 |
In 1998, when The Truman Show was making its way into theaters, Newsweek magazine interviewed the movie’s star, Jim Carey. Among other things Carey talked about, he admitted to a great deal of curiosity about God: “What is up there? What’s God? I’ve spent my whole...
by Guy Sayles | Mar 23, 2009 |
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls us away from our desperate drive for security into a confident dependence on God:Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the...
by Guy Sayles | Mar 18, 2009 |
I have been thinking lately about how change and growth happen in us. It seems to me that the most far-reaching spiritual shifts and emotional realignments we experience take a long time. They might begin in an instant of inspiration or be initiated by the occurrence...
by Guy Sayles | Mar 5, 2009 |
I think of Lent as a season in the wilderness, and I don’t think of the wilderness as, necessarily, a “bad” place to be. The Bible views the wilderness, as it views so many other things, paradoxically. On the one hand, a wilderness is an abandoned or...
by Guy Sayles | Feb 19, 2009 |
I am spending most of this week away, leading a Bible study for one church in the Atlanta area and a Deacons’ retreat for another. The churches are different from each other in some ways. One is an old and venerable downtown church, located in the center of a...
by Guy Sayles | Feb 16, 2009 |
Charles Darwin’s 200th Birthday was last week, and it got me thinking again about the relationship between faith and science. Some of us fear that modern science has issued orders which, if we complied with them, would shutter the sanctuaries, empty the choir lofts,...
by Guy Sayles | Feb 10, 2009 |
Paul Jones, who taught theology at a seminary in Kansas City, has a great appreciation for jazz. At one time, he and a colleague spent a good deal of time scouting-out new jazz players in that town which has such a fine jazz tradition. After hearing [a new musician...
by Guy Sayles | Feb 3, 2009 |
In a recent Christian Century (January 13, 2009), I read an excerpt from an interview with poet Christian Wiman. Wiman returned to his childhood faith after many years of searching and wandering. When he did, some people met that return with suspicion and wondered if...
by Guy Sayles | Jan 27, 2009 |
One of life’s most healing and simplest gifts is silence. In one way, I can claim it easily: get away from the blaring TV, turn off the cellphone and the radio, shut down the computer, and get some distance from the buzz and hum of activity. It’s what...
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