I love it. It’s a great space. I worked there for three years.  We shouldn’t be spending federal money to repair it. But according to the Los Angeles Times, Mayor Vincent Gray is seeking 15 million dollars in Federal Emergency Management funds to help the Cathedral make the repairs needed after an earthquake rocked the [...]

My thanks to the folks at Patheos for an invitation to participate in an on-line roundtable devoted to Richard Foster’s Sanctuary of the Soul.  Foster issues a fresh invitation to journey into God through meditative prayer. Exploring the way in which Scripture, icons, silence, and other practices can serve us on that journey, Foster succeeds [...]

I have the privilege of serving this year as chaplain to the Dallas Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.  I gave the brief homily that appears below at the opening convocation.  I have posted it here, for whatever value it may be to organists, other musicians, vocalists, and those who simply love music.  Psalm [...]

Reflecting on the events of 9/11, one veteran journalist called the events of that day “a loss of innocence.”  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the primary connotations of the word innocence (from the Latin, innocentia) are: 1. Freedom from sin, guilt, or moral wrong in general; the state of being untainted with, or unacquainted [...]

This week marked the beginning of a new academic year.  As in years past, I have spent a few days describing the nature of our spiritual formation program to new students. Over a decade ago the program looked very different from the one we have today.  We relied on outside facilitators.  The student experience varied [...]

I work in both churches and the academy.  And, from time to time, people will preface their response to something I’ve said with the words, “Well, if you worked in the real world…” Frankly, all those comments demonstrate is how little people know about the church and the academy, where (as the saying goes) “the [...]

The New York Times can’t stop reporting on “The News of the World” debacle.  They run two or more “news” articles a day and throw in an editorial — just in case the editorializing isn’t finished.  They devoted only one article to the work of American Bridge and stuck to “just the facts.” Aaron Fielding [...]

Nothing I said in What God Wants for your Life got me into more trouble than the chapter on signs and wonders: Don’t you believe in miracles? Don’t you believe that God is active in the world? Don’t you believe in the power of prayer Yes…but I don’t believe that signs and wonders are necessarily [...]

News of the Casey Anthony trial has been hard to avoid.  Every major news outlet has devoted space to it. The BBC World News Service ran an article just moments following the verdict in an effort to account for the reasons this trial had received so much attention.  In summary, here are the reasons offered [...]

We were on a mission to find Indian Food at one of our favorite restaurants and en route we were listening to NPR’s “Fresh Air.”  Terry Gross was interviewing Nick Paumgarten and we caught the conversation midstream. Paumgarten was talking about on-line dating and observed that one of the random indicators he had found of [...]