January 2016

  • Writing Goals for 2016

    ·

    We all need goals. I see them like the map to the destination. I won’t know when to turn where until I get to the road anyway, but at least I know my direction. I’ve taken on my three words for this year and am making them more a part of my routine. I remain conscious…

    Read More

  • The Second Most Important Reason to Stop Shaming Children

    ·

    We have got to cut it out. From the Dad who shot his daughter’s laptop to the Mom who made her son stand on a street corner with a sandwich board sign. May as well be a scarlet letter. These methods don’t work. And we know that’s true, these gimmicks, these attempts to help/punish, but…

    Read More

  • Find Love, Make Love

    ·

    “Make love” is a great phrase. I’m really captivated by this simple phrase: make love. Beyond the childish euphemism to sex, there is a potent mix of fascination and intimacy. We are pulled into each other’s orbits, physically present with someone, and it is in that place love is made. To be honest, I’ve never liked it…

    Read More

  • Coming Home

    ·

    The Spirit which came upon him and moved him to go into the desert. Now within him. No disciples yet. Just the Spirit. Jesus returns with one heck of a sermon Epiphany 3C | Luke 4:14-21 The first sermon For as powerful as his storytelling and rhetoric is, if this is an example of Jesus’s preaching,…

    Read More

  • How We Balance Life and Death On One Word

    ·

    The Supreme Court has let us off the hook again.  I don’t really think we’re cruel people. But the evidence again proves me wrong. The Supreme Court, in its 8-1 decision in Kansas v. Carr did not rule on a landmark Death Penalty case. It is only landmark for those three persons on death row who…

    Read More

  • It May Have Happened Sort of Like This

    ·

    Trying to Explain the Nature of the Anglican Communion to Someone Who Should Know Better As most of you already know, the primates of the Anglican Communion met last week in Canterbury. Now, it was kind of a — What’s a primate? It is the bishop chosen to represent the Anglican Church of a given…

    Read More

  • Some Further Thoughts on Politics, Primates, and Problems

    ·

    Everybody thinks it is complicated. On Sunday when I announced that we would cover some of the recent primates’ meeting in our Basic Anglicanism class, one of our parishioners leaned over and said: There’s nothing basic about that. That’s Advanced Anglicanism. I couldn’t agree more! The problem is that it is splashed all over the papers…

    Read More

  • The Dream of GOD, a Nightmare of Privilege

    ·

    When we speak of a dream, we speak not of the hazy sleep indulgence, the phantasm of our psyche, but the very call of GOD to make this world radically different from the way it is. The dream, a tricky encounter of revelation. Assaults our attention with our own grim reflection of imperfection that it…

    Read More