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Lent and the Threat of Identity Theft

by | Mar 11, 2017 | 7 comments

A few years ago, someone in New York got the number of one of our credit cards and spent a few thousand dollars in stores I never heard of on stuff I’d never use. He also got my Social Security number, filed a false tax return, and pocketed a nice refund. I was a...

A Better Kind of Lost

by | Mar 3, 2017 | 6 comments

Several years ago, I got lost in the Pisgah National Forest. I’d heard about a trail that made a loop from the trailhead and back again, ascended enough to offer a challenge, and promised breathtaking views. The friend who’d told me about it said the hike would...

All Means All

by | Feb 15, 2017 | 2 comments

Near my desk, in a picture frame I don’t dust often enough, is a fading photograph of our daughter, Amanda, and our son, Eliot. Amanda’s about six years old; Eliot has just turned four.  They’re standing in the bright sunshine of an Easter morning. She has on a...

“Using” Religion?

by | Feb 5, 2017 | 2 comments

This semester, I’m teaching a course called “Christian Ethics in Engagement with U.S. Culture”; sometimes the syllabus and the daily news mirror each other in uncanny ways.This past week, for instance, I had been talking with my students about how the nation’s...

Laryngitis and a New Voice

by | Jan 29, 2017 | 30 comments

Lately, I’ve been stunned into an uneasy silence. I haven’t known what to say about the last days of Barack Obama’s presidency and the beginning of Donald Trump’s. Even if I could find words to express what I think and feel, I’m under no illusion that what I would say...