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Surrender

Bruce Springsteen sang the truth I experienced this past Thursday evening at All Souls Cathedral: “In the end, what you don’t surrender, well, the world just strips away.”After we shared the Maundy Thursday Eucharist, the church gradually descended into thicker...

Conversations about Calling

One of many gifts I receive from my students at Mars Hill University is our ongoing conversations about vocation and calling.  As they get closer to graduating, they inevitably ask questions like:“What’s next?”“Grad school?  What discipline and where?”“A...

I Can’t Make Him Beautful Enough

Words are both fragile and sturdy vessels.  Like rafts on storm-tossed water, they sometimes break beneath us and leave us stranded at a far distance from the mystery and meaning we sought to reach. Not always, though; they also may take us beyond the horizon of...

God’s Will?

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”Jesus taught his followers to acknowledge that the earth doesn’t yet fully flourish under God’s gracious rule of justice and peace and to pray that it will. He invited us to join him in his longing for...

The Political Circus and Ordinary Life

It’s hard to take my eyes off of the three-ring circus of the current political season. There are ringmasters from the media; strongmen who bend rights and break values; young trapeze artists who fly high on ambition; sellers of snake-oil made from focus-group...

Deeper Stillness and Wider Awareness

For “Christian Ethics Engages U. S. Culture,” a course I’m teaching this semester at Mars Hill, I’ve been revisiting the writings and witness of Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), who stands at the headwaters of what eventually became Christian existentialism. He was a...