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Reflections in a Troubled Lent

One of my Lenten practices is to reduce the amount of “breaking news” I watch. During last year’s election season, MSNBC was the steady background noise of my mornings and evenings.  Most days, there was less than an hour’s worth of actual news, but it got...

Lent and the Threat of Identity Theft

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

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

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?

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

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...