My favorite question asked of men and women preparing for ordination in the Presbyterian Church is this: “Will you seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love?” The question reminds both the person being ordained and those who count on pastors for competent, faithful leadership that each of those qualities matters. It’s not enough to be theologically educated. Or to be committed to church growth or to programs or even to good preaching. The habits of mind... Read more

I recently saw a father stop in the aisle of a hardware store, lay down the tool he was considering, squat to his child’s eye level and listen to whatever it was the little boy had to say. It may have been simply one of the tedious “Can we go now?” queries every parent hears from children who are tired of trekking around on adult business. It may have been a request to stop for a snack on the way... Read more

I learned the term “hypervigilance” from a psychologist whose practice was full of adults who had learned habits of fear as children. They had lived on high alert because an unpredictable and abusive parent might strike out at any time, or because an adult’s anxiety made every situation seem fraught with dire possibilities. Hypervigilance is an all-too-common pathology—tragic in children and crippling in adults who haven’t found healing. Vigilance, on the other hand, is an invigorating, life-sustaining quality shared by... Read more

Years ago we lived across the street from a couple who had emigrated from Ireland. My daughters were amused by the occasional scolding the mother gave her more mischievous child: “You’re a bold girl!” They laughed because the word had such a different meaning in the stories we read at home about bold adventurers or bold and courageous deeds. But the Irish usage opened a nice occasion for reflection on the double-edged virtue of boldness. Little Carrie’s “boldness” was often... Read more

For Advent this year I’ll be meditating on 25 adverbs, each of which seems to offer a bit of direction about how to live now, in this unsettling post-election season, still full of promise no political disaster can destroy.  Here is the one for today.   A dear friend and teacher offered me this reminder as she died: “Live boldly. Live generously.” She had loved and encouraged me through many of the uncertainties of early adulthood, and offered this challenging advice not... Read more

After reading bleak reports this morning of water protectors blasted by water cannons in freezing temperatures and white supremacists lifting Nazi salutes and yet more human dangers to sea turtles, I thought of these lines from W.H. Auden’s stirring poem, “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”: . . . Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice … The great poets, he suggests, venture into the darkness and speak into... Read more

“Komm, Sußer Tod” – “Come, sweet death.” So begins one of Bach’s most memorable sacred songs. Many love it for its exquisite music—a slow, contemplative movement through 21 measures in C minor that includes all twelve chromatic tones. The music alone reminds us that we cannot hasten the last things, but must, as Shakespeare puts it, endure our going hence even as our coming hither. The lyrics are sobering. Some even find them disturbing, as a friend of mine did... Read more

Creator God, in this unsettling transition, so dismaying to many of us who fear for the most vulnerable among us and for the fragile earth, we trust in your loving care. You made us and will not abandon us. You did not promise freedom from conflict or suffering, but promised to be with us. You are with us now.   So we come in a difficult season of public life asking for guidance, clarity, courage, healing, widened perspective deepened faith, and... Read more

I love your statutes, your precepts, your judgments, your testimonies, your commandments, your law, your promises, your word: so many dimensions to the Psalmist’s delight not only in what God teaches him, but in the variety of the ways God does that. There are both obvious and subtle differences among the words in this list of God’s gifts to a people in need of guidance. Each of them testifies to the persistence and flexibility and reliability and richness of the... Read more

When people reminisce fondly about childhood I often wonder how many social trials in the schoolyard they are airbrushing out. Kids can be brutal. I remember a group of girls who pointedly wouldn’t play jacks with me, kids whose lunchtime circles seemed impenetrable, giggling groups whose secrets I knew weren’t for me. I wasn’t an outcast; I had my own friends and a loving family and a church where I knew I belonged. I imagine, though, that everyone experiences exclusion... Read more