Last week I contracted with a publisher to write a book on prayer–the working title of the book (hopefully released in Fall 2019) is Prayer for People Who Don’t Believe in God. I’m excited–this is not a topic that I would necessarily have chosen, but the publishing house contacted me after one of their editors started reading this blog and liked my approach to sticky and difficult religious concepts such as prayer. The working title is a nod toward what I... Read more
Jeanne and I recently had the opportunity to see a local community theater’s production of Godspell, one of my all-time favorite musicals. We went because a friend was in the show; as it turned out, two other people that we know were also in the ensemble, one from church and one from the college. Godspell burst on the scene in the early seventies when I was in high school, around the same time as Jesus Christ Superstar. Both shows shocked... Read more
I have grown weary of trying to understand the unquestioning support that Donald Trump receives from thirty-five to forty percent of the American electorate, but continue to find certain aspects of that support both frustrating and fascinating. Trump supporters often say things like “He’s saying things that many of us have been thinking for years but have, for any number of reasons, not been able to say. He speaks for us.” Which raises the question—How much of what we believe to... Read more
A question that is almost guaranteed to start an argument in some circles goes to the heart of both American and Christian identity. Is America a Christian nation? In an essay published last week by Bearings, the online magazine of the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research in Collegeville, Minnesota, I grapple with this question as framed by Marilynne Robinson in several of her recent essays. Robinson asks: What would one expect to find if America (or any other country)... Read more
Frederick Buechner says that vocation is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. A note from a marginalized student at the end of the semester reminded me that, sometimes, this actually happens. Read more
An annual musical fixture of my Baptist upbringing was the Easter Cantata. Each year on Easter evening our small choir would perform a contemporary setting of the Passion and Easter story from Last Supper through the Resurrection. My aunt Gloria was the choir director, several of my relatives sang in the choir from my pre-teen years on, and from about age twelve through high school I was the piano accompanist for this annual event. We weren’t that good and the... Read more
Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, “Some gardener must tend this plot.” The other disagrees, “There is no gardener.” So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. “But perhaps he is an invisible gardener.” So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G.... Read more
A few years ago, Jeanne returned from a weekend with a friend in Vermont with a little plant in a box—a Vermont blackberry bush. It has been trying to take over our back yard ever since. It has also recently been the source of a fascinating, ongoing conversation that Jeanne and I have had about fruit, growth, and how to bring what is greater than us into the world. Our new family member looked innocent enough, but it actually had... Read more
Atheism is a purification Simone Weil Former President Obama loved to quote a hopeful statement from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it tends toward justice.” The quote was so important to the former President that he had it woven into a rug in the Oval Office. The statement is controversial, because it can be used to justify all sorts of ideas (since there are many conceptions of what “justice” amounts to), as... Read more
Now that we are on the brink of armed conflict with our Canadian neighbors to the north, I thought it might be helpful to share some observations I made about the differences between Canadians and Americans three summers ago. It never hurts to know your enemy! A beautiful day in Toronto in front of me—what to do? Jeanne was tied up last Saturday from 8-5 with work, the reason we were in Toronto in the first place, so the day... Read more
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