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September 2020

September 10, 2020

Silence: The Best Answer to Prayer

I, as many people of faith, have often wondered why the divine is so apparently...

September 08, 2020

Living On the Edges of the Christian Circus Tent

Jeanne and I celebrated our 32nd anniversary in July—the gifts we gave each other are...

August 2020

August 25, 2020

O God, Come to My Assistance

Classes begin at my college next Monday, and the stress levels among the faculty (and...

August 19, 2020

When the Bible is Not the Word of God

This month marks the eighth anniversary of this blog. It started on Wordpress as an...

August 04, 2020

What if God Doesn’t Want to be Found?

Summer is a time for catching up on my non-philosophy reading and finding new authors....

July 2020

July 23, 2020

I’ll See It When I Believe It

When we first moved to Rhode Island in the middle 1990s for my new teaching...

June 2020

June 10, 2020

Interfaith Travel, and a Reminder that No One Owns God

There are several contemporary writers on spiritual issues and matters of faith whose work I...

June 02, 2020

God and Darwin have a conversation about diversity

A number of years ago, during a public forum on my campus focused on steps...

May 2020

May 30, 2020

A Pentecost Reflection: Sometimes Fast Food Isn’t Good Enough

Pentecost celebrates one of the high points in the Christian liturgical calendar, the coming of...

May 20, 2020

What if God isn’t Perfect?

One of the central units in my General Ethics class is titled “Does ethics have...

May 10, 2020

Sometimes, Getting Stoned is a Bad Thing

The New Testament reading in today's lectionary line-up is the stoning of Stephen from the...

April 2020

April 30, 2020

We are Nothing but Wind

I am not a complainer by nature. My wife, my family, and my friends would...

April 18, 2020

9/11, the Coronavirus, and Becoming a Better Person

Everyone beyond a certain age can remember clearly what they were doing eighteen-and-a-half years ago...

April 11, 2020

New Life is for Real: A Childhood Easter Tale

Several years ago, just in time for the Christmas holiday season, a new book by Sarah...

April 08, 2020

Waiting for an Hour: A Maundy Thursday Meditation

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

April 02, 2020

“I Don’t Know”: The most profoundly religious statement of all

Let me tell you here first, “trust in God” has never floated my boat as...

March 2020

March 02, 2020

God Is Doing the Best that God Can Do

Frank Tupper, an important Baptist theologian who argued that God is in control of very...

February 2020

February 29, 2020

Jesus I Know . . . But Who are You?

Today is the First Sunday of Lent; the gospel traditionally is a version of Jesus'...

February 24, 2020

A Lenten Reflection: The Difference Between Solitude and Being Alone

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

February 23, 2020

A Lesson from Transfiguration Sunday: Stop, Look, and Listen–but don’t touch

Today is the last Sunday before Lent, a Sunday which, in the liturgical calendar, is...

February 11, 2020

Spiritual Punctuation

In my life-long spiritual journey, the decade of my twenties was the charismatic decade. No,...

January 2020

January 30, 2020

Best of 2019 #1: I am a Liberal Because I am a Christian

Last April, I decided to write an essay exploring something that I have been saying...

December 2019

December 31, 2019

Letting God Creep In

About halfway through his lengthy essay, Schjeldahl notes his agreement with one of Weil’s...

December 29, 2019

A Family on the Run, and Dead Babies in the Streets

This Christmas season seems more dissonant than most, with violence across the globe, an impeachment...

December 26, 2019

Dammit, It’s the Incarnation!

Last year around this time, I posted an essay that turned out to be more...

December 10, 2019

Living in a Minor Key

At some point early in their musical training, all serious musicians are introduced to the...

December 08, 2019

There Is No Immaculate Perception

I have taught philosophy in Catholic higher education for twenty-eight years as a non-Catholic. Although...

November 2019

November 27, 2019

My Advent Wish: Peace Be To You

Advent begins this coming Sunday. I was raised in a version of Christianity that had...

October 2019

October 24, 2019

To My Atheist Friends: This is why I call myself “Christian”

Every once in a while--it seems like about once every six months or so--I post...

October 17, 2019

How to Tell if You are More Christian Than I Am

If we remembered that water takes its color from the vessel containing it, we would...

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