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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...

Jesus Doesn’t Belong to Us

Amid all the Christmas gift-buying and holiday party-going, there may be a moment or two when some people who don’t think much about Jesus will wonder about him. Brilliant and troubled writer David Foster Wallace once asked: “Does this guy Jesus Christ have something...

Grateful for Gratitude Itself

I’m grateful forFamily and friends (including the shaggy, four-legged one, Ellington)Colleagues and studentsBuskers on the streets of AshevilleFinely crafted sentences and intricately simple musicStreams, rivers, peaks and hollows (hollers)Soaring hawks and swimming...

Here and Now: Little, Local, and Daily Things

Leaves whirl like dervishes in the insistent wind. The smoke of burning forests bites my eyes. Sunlight shines through cloudless skies onto parched ground. The mountains moan for rain; stubbled valleys echo their wordless, desperate prayer.Fall’s changes anticipate...