Sick Pilgrim
How do I forgive someone from my heart, when my heart still stings and I find it hard to respect them? Read more
How do I forgive someone from my heart, when my heart still stings and I find it hard to respect them? Read more
Walked into the chapel at dusk last night, and there she was, in the casket off to the left, with her son standing sentinel. He is a priest and he was smiling a little in welcome as people walked up to him and hugged him, if they were young, or shook his hand, if they were older men. The older men who shook his hand would take his right hand with their right hands and then cover the two clasped... Read more
I’m not a cheery feel-good person. In fact I’m quite misanthropic and struggle with fitting into positive-smiley-handshaking-company. I have frequently found myself a reject of mainstream Christian circles. 86’ed. Thrown out, gotten rid of, banned. In food service, it refers mostly to an item no longer being on the menu, but can also mean to deny someone service. In church, I’ve been that guy. It’s no coincidence that shortly after becoming a Christian in 1995, I discovered a... Read more
Matisyahu came into my life when I was as a Presbyterian minister at THE Ohio State University. I had just been elected to be the president of the Inter-Faith counsel and through that position, made friends with a woman who was a Jewish rabbi. We attended each other’s student groups and would often discuss various theological viewpoints. We were talking music one day and she said, “I think you should check out Matisyahu, you’ll dig him.” I don’t think that... Read more
I was raised without music or book censorship, for the most part. My parents were not church goers. The first time I encountered the music police was when I was 17. My friend turned off Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” and said, “I can’t listen to this one. It’s against my religion.” Two years later I converted to Christianity, and I was surrounded by music police. I stopped listening to Depeche Mode, too. Which is kind of a bummer. I missed out... Read more
I love music. I love all kinds of music. My mind uses music like a label on a file folder. Like so many of you, different songs or artists or sometimes genres will help me recall a specific person, event, or period of my life. The Beach Boys will never fail to remind me of my late father, and “Walking on Sunshine” always transports me to a morning at summer camp, right after I got a letter from the boy... Read more
Once, decades ago, Dylan went nuts, jumped from one universe into another and called himself a Christian. Get this: I believe Bob is a prophet, and for proof, all you have to do is ask yourself what kind of mind writes as if he is channeling a Ouija voice, and is dipping his pen in an electrified ink well? He moves so easily between mysticism and sarcasm, dancing the edge of irony. But, Bob lost me for a time, back then,... Read more
A few months ago, I went back to Chicago with my daughter, now 6. We were visiting her godmother, my best friend, for the weekend. Driving north from Indiana on the Dan Ryan, we drove beneath the south side overpass I travelled across every weekday from my apartment in Hyde Park to the under-resourced Marquette Park elementary school where I taught 6th grade – one of a handful of white teachers in a Black and Latino school. Growing up in... Read more
Once not long ago, at my lowest point of faith, of faithlessness really, after my father died and I was deep in the trenches of “nothing matters,” I listened to a podcast. This podcast in particular talked about putting things that inspired wonder or awe in you, into a “God box” in your mind. Like a sunset, or the sound of birds singing, or whatever. Put it into the “God box.” The guy on the podcast said it helped him... Read more
This was not what you might expect for the kind of place that had people get stabbed over a game of pool: Lou Rawls and Teddy Pendergrass, the J Geils Band and Styx. Read more
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