There are so very many ways to get lost.  And most of them include some kind of stumbling over love.  Wrestling with that confusion seems to be an essential part of the human journey.  Even Jesus had to wrestle with what it meant to be loved, and more than once.  He had his temptations, in the wilderness and after that, too. There’s murkiness inside the human heart, as well as in the world.  Lent is heartful work, a journey into... Read more

It’s bleak midwinter – February – and black history month, when the long wintry shadow of race that hovers over America, gets some attention.  The last Sunday of Epiphany shines its light on a nation where it is rare indeed for white people and people of color to worship together. Last spring, in an exhibit at the Smithsonian about slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello estate, I saw skillfully made things,  silverware and china, intricately carved furniture,  nails and bullets,  rifles, carriages,... Read more

Light is our perennial winter theme.  Epiphany, the season of lights and signs, reveals something of what it means to be human.  But there are differences in lights, in their uses and in their revelations.  Some lights invite us, starlight, Christmas lights, sunshine on spring days, these bring hope into blossom and melt what is frozen.  And there are other lights, lasers that destroy and the harsh, merciless lights of interrogation, surgical lights that lay bare what is diseased. The story... Read more

“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus said it.  According to Luke, Jesus said it as soon as he caught his breath from forty days of struggling with his personal demons in the wilderness.  And he said those words right after he read these words from the prophet Isaiah:  The Spirit of God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor . . .proclaim release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind .... Read more

The Gospel of John is a book of signs.  Each sign, each epiphany, emanates from Jesus.  None comes from elsewhere.   John says:  he is the light of the world,  and in him was light. In John, there is no holy birth.  The opening chapter is a preamble rather than a tale.  There is no angel glow.  No star in the sky, no majesties bearing gifts, no pregnant Mary declaring the Child’s purpose.  In his preamble John simply declares Jesus’ light to be... Read more

This is the season of lights, the season of signs, the season of epiphanies.  The Sundays are bright with showings in the dark of the year. After the Star which was high in the heavens, this second Epiphany light is still above us but much closer, shining upon Jesus and splashing him with a name, Beloved, as he stands wet and revealed in the Jordan. Each of these Sunday signs provokes some kind of struggle.  This one does not end... Read more

Moving slowly, they emerge from the darkness of human imagination, first as the rippling of shadows, then forming into majestic selves as the bright star leads them into the light of the Child.  Everything about them is quiet.  The silence of camel hooves in sand.  Their beautiful cloaks, muffling human sounds.  They do not speak.  They give, they dream, they leave. Going home by another way, they remain with us as wonder.  We carry them all our days, for home is... Read more

Christmas Day  (Unknown Painter.  From Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition)  In winter when the birds put down their flutes And wind plays sharper than a fife upon the icy rain, I sit in this crib, And laugh like fire, and clap my golden hands: To view my friends the timid beasts- Their great brown flanks, muzzles and milky breath! Therefore come, shepherds, from your rocky hill, And bend about My crib in wonder and adore My... Read more

Christmas Eve (detail from painting by Giotto di Bernardone, Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Art in the Christian Tradition) Outside the open window the air is all awash with angels. Now they are rising together in calm swells Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing; Now they are flying in place, conveying The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving And staying like white water; and now of a sudden They swoon down into so... Read more

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned . . . . by William Butler Yeats, from The Second Coming A tide of small bodies riddled with bullets stopped our world, arrested our attention, and held us, for a week, in a reality we cannot bear:  that this is the world we live in,  this is really who we are. Shooter, victims, murdered mother, shattered families, wounded town, madness making its way so easily past... Read more