Cosmic Christ and New Creation
On November 24, the last Sunday of the church year, I collaborated with our worship leaders in organizing a service that would move us from the symbolism of “Christ the …
Eyeless in Gaza
Eyeless in Gaza we strike out bringing down the temple of our gods, turning into ashes bodies of our dreams, the tender offspring of our hope. Was not …
In the Dark time…a Light
As we move through a season of stark contradiction between the happy music in churches and the violence and horrific death in Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, and Sudan, between the fervent consumption …
Ketoctin Grace
As long-time readers of this blog know, a small brick church in Virginia’s Loudoun County has been a singular presence in my entire life. Ketoctin Baptist Church was founded in …
Poetics, Liturgy and Lent
At the invitation of the pastors at my church, I provided the opening call and prayer for our worship services from Ash Wednesday to Easter this year. It became a …
Christmas in Ukraine
There are times in our individual lives, in the lives of communities and nations, and now even on this planet, when a catalytic flash seems to weld together our fitful …
In the Time of Grace
In the time of grace beyond three score and ten a clearing opens up before me at the edge of woods where I have made my fires, built my homes, …
Hattie’s Gift
When by some good grace we enter into our elder years, we begin to search for those who might help guide us into ways we might surrender our lives at …
Words in Waiting
Never has the Advent admonition to wait had such import as in this seemingly endless pandemic. We are waiting for the coming of a time that is in some sense …
Under Howard Thurman’s Tree
Howard Thurman entered my consciousness sometime in the 1960s, as I was taking up my graduate studies at Yale. As Dean of the Chapel at Boston University (1953-65), he was …
Falling On Our Knees
Our knee is on creation’s neck. Her breath is halting, weak, Strangled by our disregard, our cold contempt. Our mother, she is crying out beneath our weight, Beseeching that we …
Weeping for the Peace of Jerusalem
In the stunned faces and writhing bodies of little children besieged by bombs and missiles we hear the ancient cry of the God whose own body is constantly torn apart …
Breaking Through
We found beneath the mulch of leaves and sticks the rough earth the broken glass a bursting acorn seeking the light its infantile roots locked against a rock below No …
2020 Vision
This is the year humanity lies sleeping on the earth in fevered nightmares like hibernating bears claws twitching restless trapped …
Not even Judas
Hidden on the mountainsides of Appalachia lives beneath majestic canopies a tree they call the Judas tree. Its purple buds begin the spring break through the bark betrayed by winter’s …