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 …
The Holy Work of Reparations
I recently finished leading a group of about 20 people here at our church through the book Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair, by Duke Kwon and Gregory …
A Collision of Christendoms
We are all trying to make our way through the images of inhuman warfare in Ukraine, grief-stricken by the loss not only of lives but of dreams of stability and …
Bodies Together at Table
We are all weary, bone weary, from the sense of loss, of powerlessness, of the shadow of doom that hangs over the earth. It is another “end of the age” …
A Covenantal Imagination
I am pleased to announce the publication of a collection of my essays from 1971 to 2003 laying out the main contours of the development of my thought. I entitled …
Giving Thanks for Desmond Tutu
Another Great Soul has burned through the flesh of this world to dwell forever in the heart of God. As for so many thousands around the world, Desmond Tutu’s death …
Of Crosses, Stars, and Peace
As we roll into Advent and Christmas, I have completed the project for Boston University’s School of Theology with a version of the processional cross I made for our church …
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 …
A Table for Marsh Chapel and Beyond
I have just completed the table that accompanies the lectern I wrote about earlier for the Boston University School of Theology. The folks I have been working with on this …
Making My Way in Ethics, Worship, and Wood
I am pleased to announce the appearance of Making My Way in Ethics, Worship, and Wood: An Expository Memoir. In this book I lay out the main way of thinking …
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 …
Under the Oaks at Ketoctin
Last Sunday I was the guest preacher at the annual Homecoming of the Ketoctin Baptist Church, near Round Hill, Virginia. This was my third invitation in thirty years to offer …
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 …
Climate Conversion, Memory, and the Fire
As I was about to put together a posting with some of the liturgy from last Sunday’s Roundtable Worship, news and pictures reached me of the horrific fire on Table …
Demons Personal and Public
America needs its own day of Yom Kippur — a day of repentance and atonement, a day of confession and renewal. Without a time set aside for naming this essential …