The Bible is filled with rocks. The patriarchs pile rocks up every time they want to remember a place where they encountered the transcendent. Moses strikes rocks twice, once in obedience and once in anger, to produce water for the thirsty and complaining Israelites. David drops Goliath with a stone thrown from a sling. Satan tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread and have something to eat. And so on. I’m sure there’s a dissertation on Biblical rocks in there for... Read more
Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully. As she waited for the ceremony to begin in Jerusalem, Magda Trocmé might have remembered these lines from Psalm 24. This is a psalm of “ascent,” sung by ancient pilgrims as they climbed to Solomon’s great temple at the top... Read more
IT’S APRIL FOOLS’ DAY–A PERFECT TIME FOR SOME IRREVERENCE! One of my unexpected reading delights in the past few years has been discovering the writings of Anne Lamott. In her struggles with faith, she is equally intense in both her relentless pursuit of the transcendent and her irreverence. In Bird by Bird, she writes that “the mind frequently has its head up its own ass—seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colorectal theology, offering hope... Read more
Last Saturday, Jeanne was out of town for work, and I had a choice to make about what channel to tune to on the television as I accomplished various tasks in the house. The word was out that Attorney General Barr would be sending a summary of the Mueller Report to Congress by the end of the day, and the talking heads on MSNBC (and everywhere else) were having a collective cow, starting early in the morning. It was also... Read more
Today’s Psalm invited us to go to the mountain of the Lord–which reminded me of a hill-climbing event that I wrote about when on retreat not that long ago . . . PREPARATION “Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord,” asked Psalm 24 at Vigils this morning. Psalm 24 is a “Psalm of Ascent,” one of a group of songs scattered throughout the Psalms that scholars tell us were sung by pilgrims as they ascended the hill to Solomon’s... Read more
Once many years ago, a couple I was close friends with was having marital problems. For the first (and only) time in my life, I found myself frequently playing the role of telephone confessor and therapist for each of them—I’m quite sure that neither was aware that I was doing this with the other. The phone calls became so frequent that one evening as I talked to the male in the relationship, the woman beeped in on call waiting. Toward the... Read more
There are several contemporary writers on spiritual issues and matters of faith whose work I admire so greatly I that purchase their latest books as soon as they are published—I have my Amazon account set up to send me such “heads up” announcements. These are authors whose books never fail to both deepen and broaden my own perspectives and attitudes about faith and what is greater than me. The list includes Anne Lamott, Joan Chittister, Annie Dillard, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Lauren... Read more
The beautiful Ruane Center for the Humanities on our campus opened in the Fall of 2013, a home, among other things, for the large interdisciplinary, team-taught course required of all freshmen and sophomores regardless of their major. The four-semester, sixteen-credit course is the Development of Western Civilization program, usually called DWC or just “Civ” by the students and faculty. I was director of this program from 2011-15, at any given time in charge of 75-80 faculty and 1800+ students as I... Read more
Not long ago, I found myself involved behind the scenes in a squabble between the chair of my department and another department colleague. Their disagreement was about the proper interpretation of the Faculty Handbook on an issue related to my colleague’s upcoming promotion case. Both asked me, as a former department chair, to offer my opinion. I felt that my colleague’s interpretation, based on a charitable “spirit of the law” reading of the relevant portion of the handbook, made more... Read more
If you think you understand it, it is not God. Soren Kierkegaard In Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gilead, Reverand John Ames (one of my top five favorite characters in all of fiction) frequently expresses doubt concerning his faith, something unexpected in a Congregational minister, at least in some circles. In the middle of the novel, Ames spends a few pages considering doubt and uncertainty in one’s faith within the context of challenges from non-believers to “prove” that God... Read more
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