between faith and fiction
Whenever I’m angry or frustrated, I tend to say a very nasty, very ugly word. Naturally, I say it often. It starts with an ‘s’ and ends in a ‘t.’ I never really thought much of it, to be honest. It has always seemed harmless, even as an ordained minister. I mean, it’s just a [Read More...]
The facts really don’t matter. When it comes to divisive political and religious issues — whether its gun control, climate change, or biblical inerrancy, no one really cares about the facts, the solid statistics, and the historical narrative. We don’t see the facts in those situations, according to a study by Yale law school professor [Read More...]
Today, we will be asked to never forget. We will be asked to revive the trauma and fear many of us experienced during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. We will be asked to relive that day, with loops of explosions, tumbling towers, rubble and rescue workers. We will be reminded never to forget. [Read More...]
For three unconventional retellings of this parable to enliven the well-worn story, visit here (the Immigrant Samaritan), here (the God Samaritan), or here (the Wrong Samaritan) Proper 10 – Year C – Luke 10:25-37 Jesus doesn’t really want you to be the good Samaritan. At least, that’s not the point of his story in this [Read More...]
Like most of my good ideas, this one happened by accident. Four days into the Lenten season, I had nothing — no fast, no practice, no structure for the 40 days — even though I had spent most of January talking up the season to my two sons. We had gone to our Ash Wednesday [Read More...]
God is not all-powerful. At least, not in the ways we tend to define power. For us, power means that we get our way, that we can impose our will upon the world around us, that we can conform others into our images in order to achieve unity and security. In our minds, we equate [Read More...]
The God of Pentecost doesn’t have an official language. This is the shocking revelation of the day of Pentecost, but one often lost amid the day’s more bombastic metaphors of rushing winds, descending doves and intoxicated disciples with tongues touched by fire. But in a country with a history of suppressing other languages in the [Read More...]
In college, I thought that by the time I was 32, I would be working at a large daily newspaper, not a month away from ordination in the Episcopal church.* As a journalism student and a greenhorn reporter in Alabama and Northern California, I assumed I would spend the majority of my adult life in [Read More...]
Violence and tragedy has again struck. And it is hard to know what to say, what to do, particularly now that mass and social media have made us all witnesses to carnage and horror. And it is even harder to remember, in moments like these, that the kind of violence our nation has experienced only [Read More...]
Director Thom Stark summarizes his award-winning film Who Art in Heaven simply: “A Man Prays.” But don’t let Stark deceive you, because if you do, he will devastate you in the best possible way. There is so much more going on in this eloquent and compact film than its tagline would have you believe, and the [Read More...]
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