It isn’t fair, Manasseh
Justice, it would seem, is deferred. Our fathers pass the buck to us, and we pass it to the next generation.
We are marching in the light of God
All of this has lain heavy like a stone on my heart. But I do not have to live in fear when I go to the house of God on Sunday mornings. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy upon us.
Will the goats please stand up?
For despite the major things Godspell gets wrong, I think it gets this one thing right. It is only those who continue to beg for mercy, who persevere in the face of judgment that have the temerity to start building the Beautiful City, brick by brick, heart by heart.
Being in remission
Once in awhile, something that I say as a part of the liturgy just leaps off of the page and grabs me.
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...
If you love Brené Brown, you might believe in original sin
You might not buy the story that grounds Christianity’s doctrine of original sin. But if you take Christianity’s doctrine of original sin and put it side-by-side with Dr. Brown’s assertions about shame, guilt, and perfectionism, you'll find they line up more closely than you first expected.
Veiling crosses in Lent
Why do Christians do this, and what's the theological significance?
The Devil is (no longer) in the details
The Church of England has kicked the devil out of its baptismal rite. This move concerns me. This sort of attempt at cultural intelligibility usually backfires and ends up making beliefs far more ambiguous and people's feelings more ambivalent.