In my experience young pastors are a little too idealistic to entertain a side hustle when they’re just starting out. It takes a little shock to the system to to open them up to the idea. It can happen in a variety of ways. One of the benign ways it can happen is realizing you’re not able to put any money away for retirement or for a child’s education with what your church can pay you. Less benign is when... Read more
One of my favorite films–definitely in the top 5–is Tim Burton’s, Big Fish. The story is about Edward Bloom, a traveling salesman with a knack for embellishing stories, and his disillusioned, and literally-minded son Will, who is both a journalist and a fact-checker by nature. I won’t go into the story, I’ll just say this–the son learns in the end that his father isn’t a liar after all. There’s just more to his stories than the mere facts. Here’s the... Read more
A modern fable about love and work. by C. R. Wiley There were giants in the land in those days, but fewer people than there used to be. Now the giants were the typical sort—lumbering and hungry. But the people were very odd, most anyway. It wasn’t uncommon for a giant to reach right into a house and pluck up one of them while he watched television. But no one minded. Sometimes it was even an occasion for tears of... Read more
If you follow this blog you can probably guess my politics. But you might be surprised to learn that I seldom address electoral politics in the course of my ministry. I’ve never endorsed a candidate or even criticized an office holder directly. I’ve been a pastor to many people with whom I’ve disagreed about electoral politics. I suppose one reason these people have stuck with me as their pastor is because I’ve not made agreeing with me on electoral politics... Read more
Years ago a Haitian pastor asked me, “Why do white people hate children?” When I told him that we do like children, most of us anyway, unconvinced he asked, “Then why do you work so hard not to have them then?” It’s a good question, one that I know my liberal friends would answer like this: “We like to plan on having them, we want to give them the best lives possible.” I know my Haitian friend would not have... Read more
Leaf by Niggle is a personal favorite. It’s right up there with Smith of Wootton Major for me. They’re two of Tolkien’s lesser works, but only if length is the measure. I think they’re distillations, densely flavored samples of the master’s mind. Smith embodies everything On Fairy Stories explicates in prose, the strangeness and melancholy of faire. But Leaf gives us something more personal, and a reason to hope. Everyone who’s read the story knows it’s about Tolkien. The protagonist... Read more
Some people apparently believe that children are better off when they’re useless. I got a little push back about my last post (see it here). A couple of people seemed to think that putting children to work constitutes exploitation. Today, “Help me plant some tomatoes”, tomorrow, “Make bricks without straw!” Not really sure where that comes from, but I have my guesses. I’ll keep my guesses to myself, a favor I hope others will extend to me. But here’s a... Read more
Last evening I was in attendance for a reading at a local library by contributors to a collection of spooky stories. I enjoyed myself and I was happy to become acquainted with some fellow authors who live nearby. (By the way, here’s a link to the book on Amazon–I recommend it.) The readings all ended where things just began to get interesting. They wanted listeners to buy the book, after all. Since I had already purchased the book, I knew... Read more
I continue my reflections on the New Testament household codes today with a subject you might mistakenly think is the least controversial of the four things I will address: children. (The other three are the instructions given to slaves, wives, and household heads. I’ve already addressed slavery here, and here. I’ll get to the instructions for wives next. I will be treating the codes as they relate to heads of households after that. Paradoxically there seems to be less controversy... Read more
When my daughter was a little girl she didn’t like stories with bad-guys in them. Whenever a bad-guy would enter a tale she would thrust her head beneath her pillow and that would be the end of that story. Since I made up the stories I told my children, I could fashion them with their tastes in mind. But telling a story without bad-guys (or any narrative tension in this case) is pretty tough to do. It’s all rainbows and... Read more
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