Christmas in May

At the corner of College Street and Haywood Road yesterday, near Mayfels’ Restaurant, a rail-thin young man, wearing a Santa hat over his shoulder-length hair and sweating profusely in the bright May midday sun, screeched out “Silent Night” on his not-well-tuned...

Prayer for our Endings

In the Book of Common Prayer, Collect 57, “For Guidance,” asks “that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy Name.” I am intrigued especially by the challenge to “end our works in God.”  That phrase raises the possibility of...

Contemporary Jesus

Early in my college years, I struggled to reclaim faith.  At least that’s what the struggle seemed to be about as I was living through it.  Looking back, it seems more likely that I was actually struggling for a way to let myself be reclaimed by a loving...

A Singing, Rejoicing, and Loving God

In his book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen wrote: “Every moment of each day I have the chance to choose between cynicism and joy. . . . Increasingly I discover that every choice for joy in turn reveals more joy and offers more reason to make life a true...

The Challenging Wisdom of Children

Years ago, near President’s Day, some of the kids in our church’s Childhood Development Center made newsprint posters which bore the heading, “If I were president, I would. . . .” With the help of their teachers, the children imagined what they would do if...

Our Island Home

The Book of Common Prayer incudes a grateful and humble acknowledgment of “this fragile earth, our island home.”  It’s a moving phrase; and, on this Earth Day, I pray that we will love this fragile earth with courageous and tender love, realizing that it’s not a...

The Compassion We Need

Have you tuned-in lately to the running play-by-play commentary on your life that is constantly blaring away in your heart and mind?  24/7/365, whether we’re conscious of it or not, harsh natter and chatter away with messages which belittle and berate us....

Joy and Death

Across my years as a pastor, I learned that people didn’t like it when I talked about death.  So, fair warning: though this post is actually about joy, it’s about the kind of joy that finds us in life’s hard experiences, including death. Early in Holy Week,...

On Not Losing Heart

”My heart isn’t in it any more.”  When we feel that way, we’re in good company.  Twice in 2 Corinthians 4, early and late in his reflections on the relationship of our humanity and the good news of Jesus, Paul claimed: “We do not lose...