Most Sundays I bend at the altar and hold the chalice of wine steady as small hands take the host and dip it into the wine before placing it onto their tongues. Every time I serve a child at the communion altar—next to their parents or grandparents—my heart feels it. The love for someone facing hardship. The fact is, people I love are being harmed; children I love are afraid. I don’t know how much young immigrant kids internalize the... Read more
Serving threshold congregations is my subject today. By this, I mean small congregations on the cusp of change amid a wider period of ecclesial change in our country. Ecclesial change is just one facet of transition in a time when almost every aspect of our country is in upheaval—cultural, technological, political, and environmental. By this point, those of us affiliated with religion are familiar with declining interest in organized religion. Most of us who attend religious services likely notice declining... Read more
In the milieu I grew up in, it seemed nothing was worse than being called “worldly.” “Worldly” meant sinful and scary. Worldliness was the opposite of Godliness, as far as I could tell, which would have meant—according to my childhood reasoning—that God was not in the world. God had to be somewhere else, in some other realm; and our job was to avoid the rest of creation until we could go there ourselves. Because if not, the world would sully... Read more
In the long passage this Sunday’s lectionary reading is from, often called the ‘Farewell Discourses,’ Jesus both says goodbye to his friends and preps them for his absence. In this sense, he’s also preparing us. A theme throughout all of it, is how connected we are to Jesus—like a vine to the branches. Not only are we connected to him through our traditions and scripture, and through community, but Jesus tells us the Holy Spirit, the here-and-now presence of God,... Read more
Today in my car, I played Kate Rusby’s ‘Hourglass,’ which I hadn’t heard in ages, and was transported to years in St. Andrews, Scotland at the close of the millennium. Those two years were seriously hard—not least of all because I was often ill. But the sad songs on that album ring gladness for me. A fiddle-pipe duet on ‘Annan Waters’ makes me shiver it’s so beautiful—even if the tune, like most English folk songs, is tragic, narrating the story... Read more
On the surface, this week’s lectionary reading at the end of John (John 20:19-31) is a story about doubt and trust, and a recounting of an appearance by Jesus before his disciples post-entombment. But I can’t read it without drawing in biblical studies. Because one of the key aspects of this passage is the statement “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John was the last of the gospels, written many decades after Jesus’ life. The... Read more
So many words could describe the current administration’s actions. Among the most salient might be retributive, erratic, careless, unconstitutional. But when it comes to the immigration actions being implemented, cruelty seems to be the point. We have the disappearance of 45 immigrants in New Mexico who are unaccounted for; the removal of hundreds of migrants to a torturous prison in El Salvador—75% of whom have no criminal record beyond their immigration offense; the whisking away of legal-immigrant students by masked... Read more
Recently, a friend offered me a book she’d found at Goodwill. It is my memoir, published in 2011; it is the copy I signed and gave to my best friend Brother Martin Gonzalez, who figured prominently in the book. Martin died in 2021. Apparently, the abbey where he’d been a monk for sixty years had taken his books and other personal effects to Goodwill. By some grace, my friend discovered Martin’s copy of my book. Discovering My Spiritual Home In... Read more
Autocracy. noun. 1. Government by a single person having unlimited power; despotism. When I visit my friend Dania (not her real name), deep connection is in store. We sit in her kitchen, to an exquisitely prepared meal of homemade soup, salad, and bread with butter, and tea. We join hands for silence, then commence a discussion that ranges from intensely personal to spiritual/philosophical/universal. I have called Dania, who is decades older than me, my “elder.” But she feels as much... Read more
Have you experienced a loss or misfortune and someone suggested it happened to you because of God’s punishment? Have you looked at your foes and wished tragedy on them—as a punishment from God? Or have you looked at accidents and tragedies in their lives and simply assumed they were to blame. Most of us can say yes to these questions. Even as I type this, the names of specific foes in my own life come to mind. People who harmed... Read more
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