Poetry is a dying art. Few people write it, read it, or would even know how to if they tried. It requires a heart, an imagination, and the ability to sit within a tension. In today’s sound-bite culture people have lost the essential ability to live within a poem This is a deeply tragic cultural illiteracy. Being unable to dwell in poetry means you are unable to dwell in the world of the Bible because so much of the Bible is poetry. Obviously there are poems... Read more

In our lives there are many directions we can focus on. In Helen Cepro’s Journaling as a Spiritual Practice: Encountering God Through Attentive Writing she encourages people to take time and figure out where you are by evaluating the compasses in your own life. To Look South is to be focused on the “Sunny exposure” of your life. This is the creative and playful part of your own life. to evaluate this think about what is drawing creativity out of you. Make a collage or... Read more

One thing I love about the Covenant Church is the Congregational Vitality Program. I think a lot of Denominations could use this stuff. Here is a video of John Wenrich giving an overview of the process. Congregational Vitality Overview from Covenant Communications on Vimeo. Do you think your church could benefit from something like this?   Read more

No theology today… just wanted to share a little beauty   Read more

Goodnight everyone! Read more

I don’t generally review books that aren’t strictly theological, but I recently read the book “Same Kind of Different as Me” after I was sent a complementary copy. I thought I would share a little bit about it. The book takes a look at the lives of two men.One is a successful art dealer, the other is a homeless man. It tracks both of their lives from childhood until they meet, and then begins to share the story of how the met and grew... Read more

This morning I decided to go to the daily liturgy at a local Ukrainian Catholic church. It was interesting, beautiful, and difficult I often take pride in my ability to feel at home in almost any worship context. I grew up in an ecumenical community and grew up going to just about every kind of church you can imagine. It’s good for me to be UNCOMFORTABLE sometimes… This church make it difficult to feel comfortable. The whole service was in... Read more

Tomorrow is Reformation Sunday. This is the Sunday where Protestants remember the birth of the Protestant Reformation. On October 31, 1517 Matin Luther is purported to have nailed his 95 thesis to the door of the church in Wittenberg, where he was a teacher. These were serious concerns about a system within the Catholic churches where many dangerous abuses had crept in. His concerns were translated, and gave voice to many of the concerns of people throughout Germany. People took... Read more

In the 1960s the Catholic Church released the document “Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity”. In it the Catholic Church strove to add new life to the laity by giving firm theological affirmations about what it means to be a Christian lay man or women. In it they declared that God’s plan for the world is for human beings to “renew and perfect” the temporal order. In other words human being have been created in a special role in... Read more