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January 2023

January 19, 2023

Be Like a Tree

There are two kinds of living things. They are distinguished by the strategies they have...

January 12, 2023

What Compost Piles Teach Us About Faith

Over the past year or so I have read several books by Peter Enns, a...

January 10, 2023

Are You the One?

During both the Advent and the Epiphany liturgical seasons, John the Baptist gets a lot...

January 01, 2023

Hope in Unexpected Form—A New Year’s Day Reflection

Every New Year’s Day for the past decade—the amount of time I have been writing...

December 2022

December 07, 2022

Why Should We Be Hopeful?

Herodotus is considered to be the first true historian in the contemporary sense of the...

December 01, 2022

An Advent Wish: Peace Be to You

Advent began last Sunday. For many reasons, Advent is my favorite season of the liturgical...

November 2022

November 25, 2022

Get Thee Behind Me, Santa!

Today is Black Friday, on my shortlist of candidates for the stupidest day of the...

November 17, 2022

What I Have Learned From Our Blackberry Bush

It is mid-November; the leaves on the large oak tree in the yard diagonally behind...

November 12, 2022

“The Heart Has Its Reasons . . .”: My Evidence Against Atheism

Although I estimate that at least 80-90 percent of the negative comments and pushback I...

October 2022

October 22, 2022

What is Prayer Supposed to Accomplish?

Today's gospel lectionary reading reminds me of an August day several years ago when the...

October 20, 2022

The Best Answer for Unanswerable Questions: “I Don’t Know”

Natural disasters have been on my mind recently. Perhaps it's because of the fury of...

September 2022

September 07, 2022

What Does the Bible Say about _____________?

In an interview with CNN a few years ago, Barbara Brown Taylor said something that...

August 2022

August 14, 2022

“Whatever” is No Way to Live

Although I occasionally find myself immersed in things medieval with a bunch of freshmen in...

August 07, 2022

This Book Changed My Life: Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead”

I asked my Facebook friends a while ago to list three or four books that...

July 2022

July 26, 2022

This Book Changed My Life: Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”

We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence....

July 20, 2022

The Webb Telescope Images and Confirmation Bias

I had an unexpected and very interesting exchange concerning science and faith on Facebook the...

June 2022

June 23, 2022

Problems with the Soul

Last week I posted an essay called “Left-Brain Christianity or Right-Brain Faith?” which discussed the...

June 11, 2022

The Spiritual Life of Crows

My childhood was filled with unusual characters, all products of my father’s fertile imagination. A...

June 07, 2022

How Should a Normal Person Approach the Bible?

I recently came across a great podcast called “The Bible for Normal People,” hosted by...

May 2022

May 26, 2022

Swallowing the Mystery

In her wonderful memoir Take This Bread, Sara Miles tells us of a conversation she had...

May 17, 2022

An Evolving Faith: It’s About Survival, not Progress

To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. Ecclesiastes...

May 14, 2022

A Story About Learning to See Things Differently

In a comment on last Thursday’s blog post—“God is Not a Vending Machine”—a Facebook friend...

May 03, 2022

The Gospel According to Compost

Alas, and did my Savior bleed, and did my Sovereign die? Would He devote that...

April 2022

April 24, 2022

A Human Being Having a Divine Experience

Two decades ago, as my mother-in-law was steadily descending into the hell of Alzheimer’s, an...

April 20, 2022

Curb Your Enthusiasm

There is a saying attributed to Saint Francis that I have heard frequently in more...

April 17, 2022

I Will Awaken the Dawn: Some Thoughts for Easter

Our seven-month old corgi Bovina, one of the greatest joys of Jeanne’s and my life,...

April 14, 2022

Falling Asleep in All the Wrong Places: A Maundy Thursday Reflection

Some people can sleep anywhere. One of those people was a student in one of...

March 2022

March 26, 2022

On the Days when I Believe . . .

After spending six and a half decades in the middle of this faith thing, one...

March 01, 2022

An Assignment for Lent: Learn the Difference Between Solitude and Being Alone

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to yourself. Michel...

February 2022

February 27, 2022

Stop, Look, and Listen: A Transfiguration Sunday Reflection

Today is Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent....

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