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Wilderness Life

Three years ago this month, I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma.Two years ago, this month, I ended my work as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Asheville.Last week, my oncologist let me know that the leading indicator of cancer’s activity went down, after having...

New Year’s Reflections from Paris

After lunch yesterday, Eliot and I took the longish walk to Pere Lachaise cemetery. It’s an eerily beautiful village of the dead, and it was an evocative place to spend part of the last day of the year.As we walked among the tombs and headstones, I pondered...

Christmas is for Children–for all of us

Sometimes, we say that “Christmas is for children.” That’s true, but only if we remember that this season’s story of divine surprise has the power to make all of us children again—to help us live in childlike openness and wonder. Feel the wind in your hair. ...

A Changed Relationship with Time

This Advent season is the second since I left the pastorate, and I’ve not yet reset my internal clock. Since this past Friday was graduation at Mars Hill, I am on leave until after New Year’s; on what used to be one of the busiest weeks of the year, I’m relatively...

The News that Matters

I’ve been trying, without much success, to make sense out of this troubling season in our national life. The trouble has bipartisan (multi-partisan!) sources, but, candidly, my greatest bafflement is about the meaning of Donald Trump’s election for who we are and...

Beauty in and Beyond Words

I recently reread Norman Pittenger’s The Lure of Divine Love, a book I first picked-up more than 30 years ago. It’s an accessible and winsome reflection on “process theology,” but the joy of savoring it again had as much to with his style and perspective as with his...