A Better Kind of Lost

by | Mar 3, 2017 | Uncategorized

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 | Uncategorized

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 | Uncategorized

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 | Uncategorized

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...

Wilderness Life

by | Jan 9, 2017 | Uncategorized

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

by | Jan 1, 2017 | Uncategorized

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

by | Dec 25, 2016 | Uncategorized

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

by | Dec 23, 2016 | Uncategorized

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

by | Dec 18, 2016 | Uncategorized

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...