by Guy Sayles | Apr 15, 2009 |
One of my favorite William Stafford poems is “The Little Ways that Encourage Good Fortune.” It concerns wisdom, which Stafford describes as “having things right in your life and knowing why.”Wisdom is having things right in your life and...
by Guy Sayles | Apr 11, 2009 |
Some reflections I shared at our Good Friday service today:On this Good Friday, I simply want to tell you the man on the cross is to me. And, as I have before, I borrow a phrase from an Anglican bishop [John A. T. Robinson] to tell you that, for me, Jesus is the human...
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...
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