My Father Ran
My father ran. He ran for Peddie School over muddy paths along New Jersey’s streams. He ran for Lehigh on the tracks in Bethlehem. He ran alone in teams …
Masks, Rights, and Covenants
Some people around us claim they have a right to refuse to wear a mask during the Covid pandemic. For some it is an appeal to a vague penumbra of …
Bursting Fourth
America begins again each year with a Big Bang so loud we cannot hear, the smoke so dense we cannot breathe, the light so bright we cannot see the dead, …
Religion and Our Constitutional Crisis
Last Sunday I made a Zoom presentation of a talk that had been scheduled BP (Before the Pandemic) with the Ethical Humanist Society of Asheville. In the talk, I returned …
Breathing Together
I was just slipping into my nighttime ritual of reading in bed before lights out when I heard a commotion out on the street and the cry, “I can’t breathe!” …
Memorial Day—A Day of Reconciliation?
It is Memorial Day in America—a time to grieve and honor those who have died in all America’s wars, including those who fought on both sides in our Civil War. …
Virtual Communion
In this time of self-isolation we are increasingly starved for face-to-face meetings with others. No internet connection can replace the rich encounter of the club, the church, the tavern, or …
A Masked and Virtual Easter
From the isolation of our fears you lead us out with everlasting arms of love. In the mask that shrouds you in death’s mystery we see the revelation …
Plague, Prayer, and Possibility
The pestilence raging all around us takes our memories back to the influenza epidemic of 1918 and beyond that to the plagues of 14th century Europe that killed off one-third …
Blessed Be the Bond
I am happy to announce the publication of the third edition of my book Blessed Be the Bond: Christian Perspectives on Marriage and Family. First published by Fortress Press in …
Sanctuary — For Guns?
In the midst of our enormous efforts to hold our Republic together around its founding principles and values, a movement, fostered by the gun industry and its lobbies, has arisen …
The Worship at the Heart of Liberation
Each year our church seeks out 40 people from the congregation to write a brief meditation to help people follow a discipline of reflection during Lent—the forty weekdays leading to …
Whose Apocalypse?
Australia is burning. It’s been burning even from the beginning of its springtime. The fires will not relent for some months to come. And then California and parts of other …
Kings, Despots, and the Children
It’s Advent again, overlaid with the sediments of Christmas, and so I return again to familiar themes—Jesus, Mary, Joseph the builder, Herod, and yes, the slaughtered children. But as evil …
Imagining the Way of Peace
Our Interfaith Peace Conference on “The Arts of Peace: Imagining the Way” has come to pass, moving from anticipation into memory. Sylvia and I now live “APC” (After the Peace …