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The Loneliness of Leaving Home
Among the kinds of loneliness that afflict us, there’s one we don’t often recognize and deal with very well, the loneliness of moving on. There’s a loneliness that comes with
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Pentecost Happened at a Meeting
If you’re someone who’s at all concerned about community, family, church, justice, education, culture, or civic issues, you will, no doubt, find yourself at a lot of meetings. A colleague
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Ministering with Authority
Recently, inside church circles, a debate took place as to whether Therese of Lisieux should be named a “doctor” of the church. Her proponents pointed to her influence within the
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The Need to Admire
Several years ago, Roger Rosenblatt, in an essay in TIME magazine, offered this advice to his son who was graduating from high school and heading off to college: “Whatever you
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Perspective on a Scandal
A number of things should be clarified to help us properly contextualize the present crisis of sexual abuse within the church. What needs clarification? Three things in particular: The effect
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Awakening the Christ-Child
Christmas cannot be taken for granted. Swiss theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, once wrote: “After a mother has smiled for a long time at her child, the child will begin
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On Being Loved Sinners
We’re strange creatures, more lovely than we think and more sinful than we imagine, too hard and too easy on ourselves all at the same time. Human nature is a
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A Meditation on Joy
Every year on the third Sunday of advent, the church asks us to do a meditation on joy. That seems a curious thing to ask, though it becomes less curious
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The Promise of Christmas
It’s easy to be cynical about the hype surrounding Christmas, not just because it starts earlier each year and seems focused on everything but the birth of Jesus, but also
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Lighting Advent Candles
To light a candle is an act of hope. In the days of apartheid in South Africa, Christians there used to light candles and place them in windows as a