Five Years In: My Journey with Cancer

by | Mar 24, 2019 | Uncategorized

I don’t usually write about my experiences with Multiple Myeloma and its treatment on this site. Most often, I post those kinds of updates and reflections on my CaringBridge site. Recently, though, I had the opportunity to speak with a blood cancer support group...

I Don’t Know . . . and I Know

by | Feb 24, 2019 | Uncategorized

I don’t know how best to respond to the divisions and alienations of our common life, whether in the public square, faith-communities, or families. What do embodying love and working for peace look, sound, and feel like in our troubled and tumultuous times? How can...

Recovering the Questions

by | Jan 22, 2019 | Uncategorized

About four years ago, my tenure as pastor of a remarkable and challenging congregation ended. It was time. For a year, I’d undergone extensive treatment for cancer, and there were more drugs, pain, and fatigue to come. I couldn’t do the work of pastoral ministry in...

Tuning-in Again and at Last

by | Jan 8, 2019 | Uncategorized

Given my work—writing, teaching, and preaching—I do a lot of talking, either on paper, on a screen, in a classroom, or in a worship space. A lot of talking. Last fall, I spent 13 hours a week in class, preached every week, and taught occasional classes or seminars for...

Ministry and the Gifts of Christmas

by | Dec 26, 2018 | Uncategorized

Among the myriad gifts of Christmas are: Assurance that God is with us—“Emmanuel.” God is not aloof from us or disinterested in us—not, as Bette Midler once sang, merely “watching us from a distance.” God is among us and for us. Clarity about the character of God. God...

The Gift of Music and the Illusion of Independence

by | Dec 15, 2018 | Uncategorized

As always happens during Advent and Christmas, I’m giving thanks for the remarkable gift of music, a gift as necessary for my spirit as breath is for my body and nearly as impossible for me to make. Other than singing hymns in church, with Bruce Springsteen in the...

All Shall Be Well: Advent Hope

by | Nov 27, 2018 | Uncategorized

My Dad was a salesman, a good one; and, on days when he was to pitch a big sale, he’d get up early, polish his shoes to a spit-shine, and review the proposal he’d soon make. As he left the house, he’d sing at the top of his lungs these familiar words from Oklahoma,...

Risk Trust

by | Nov 20, 2018 | Uncategorized

As I listen to my life and to the Spirit, I almost always hear these invitations: Risk trust. Practice love. Welcome joy. Discover hope. A full, free, and flourishing life hinges, first and finally, on trust. Erik Erikson said that, in the earliest stage of life, our...

Lord, Have Mercy

by | Oct 28, 2018 | Uncategorized

News of reprehensible things still shocks and unsettles most of us, as it should. I worry, though, that we are careening toward a national normlessness and undergoing a public desensitization which will result in our merely noting, not decrying and crying over, awful...