Small as a mustard seed and just as fair, The seeds of faith are planted in the night, Seeking their tiny space of warmth and light, Asking but room to grow and prosper there. Small as the seeds of faith, the hope of trust Once-wounded reaches out into the day For answering trust somewhere along the way The fruit of pain and light, of love and loss. We learn there is no other way but this And that... Read more
By Christ John Otto, from a forthcoming book. A worldview is a way of processing the world around you. It is the “lens” a person uses to see things, process information, and organize information in order to quickly sort out problems. If you are a Christian artist, and especially if you consider yourself a conservative, Protestant evangelical or non-denominational charismatic, you probably have a pretty strong worldview when it comes to your calling as an artist. After a dozen years providing... Read more
By J. Fletcher Lowe; preached on Labor Day 2017 I have a friend named Bill Diehl. A few years ago, he retired as an executive with a major steel manufacturing company here in the East. He also was a devoted Lutheran, having served not only on his parish and regional levels, but also on the national church level. As he reflected on his life, he realized that he had been honored in many ways for his service for the Lutheran... Read more
Here are my reflections from my first year of retirement and my conversations with many other retirees who have shared their insights. Read more
Occasionally I share poetry here (either mine or from the public domain, dear copyright people.) I wrote quite a few poems at one point drawing on my vocation as a librarian, and here’s one. Hopefully, by next week my schedule will have cleared appropriately for prose. Deering Library Entering the cathedral thru well-lit catacombs through silent halls, high stairs, grinning gargoyles, stacked books, grey boxes, wooden carvings, more echoes than words. In a side chapel a wine press guards... Read more
Whatever else I thought I might post about today, it got elbowed out (I was going to say “trumped” but I find it difficult to use that as a verb anymore) by this article in the Washington Post yesterday: “I am sorry for killing everything: A millennial’s confession.” (It takes its inspiration from this list of things millennials have been accused of killing at Mashable.) The millennial in question, Alexandra Petri, describes—in a pitch-perfect takedown of my generation and the... Read more
Today, the article you should read is over at Christianity Today, called “The Pay Gap is Worse for Pastor-Moms” by Kate Shellnutt. First of all, as someone who just survived an hour’s webinar with 15 evangelical male clergy (I will sometimes cop to being evangelical, but am absolutely not male) who kept repeatedly referring to all other pastors as “guys,” I am thrilled to death that CT put up such an article. Secondly, they make really good points about why churches underpay female... Read more
I am, naturally, grateful that I still have health insurance this morning. I got a kick out of this tweet someone pointed me to: There’s also a New Yorker cartoon, previously published but re-circulating in response to yesterday’s events, where a woman is sitting in a work meeting composed mostly of men, and has obviously just spoken. The chairman responds, “That’s an excellent suggestion, Miss Triggs. Perhaps one of the men here would like to make it.” All of which makes this a good day... Read more
I don’t have much time today (because I’m busy being entrepreneurial) for anything other than a quick thought provoked by the current health-insurance debates raging. (Do debates ever do anything but rage? Sorry. I promise to not turn this into a linguistics blog.) I had reasons to say both of these things in conversation on social media today: “Philosophically, I’m a Distributist: keep everything as small and local as possible. (The political philosophy of G. K. Chesterton.) Medically, I’m an... Read more
I work from home, so unless I’m on a conference call, I can take a nap where and when I want, without a boss seeing. But would I want to? A recent article in the New York Times makes a case for napping. Some excellent points, including: Telling people to work on their work-life balance and manage their inbox is not enough: the problem is more structural: the modern workplace is one where people are always stressed, and expect to be stressed.... Read more
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