Bowie, Rickman, and the end of virtue
Celebrities are our secular saints. So when a celebrity dies, especially unexpectedly, there is a strange murmur that runs through our culture.
Am I ready to die?
The diagnosis came like a bolt from the blue. As a priest, I have regularly been near death and dying, but I found myself unprepared for the inevitable in my case.
“A mere shepherd of these words”
The other day I heard a fine choir sing "The heavens' flock" — a setting by the Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds of a text by the poet Paulann Petersen. (Have a listen here.) What follows is a series of meditations prompted by my encounter with this music and ... Read More...
Poem: After an ice storm on Ash Wednesday
Ice fell from the sky last night,
and tree branches now bear its weight.
We heard them groan and crack in the dark,
gun shots ringing out through the still woods.
In the morning some limbs hang ... Read More...
Ashen living: Better Call Saul and the life of repentance
Unlike Saul Goodman, there is for us an ashen existence that is humble, repentant, and thankful, aware of grace and full of grace.
A meditation for Lent I
This brief meditation for the first Sunday in Lent was originally printed in the bulletin at my parish, Trinity Episcopal Church in Lawrence, Kansas.