Singing Along the Journey

beliefs

Five years later…

It has been five years.  Five years since I put on that worn out white robe and climbed those creaky, ancient stairs to the baptismal at the Calvary Baptist Church (only pausing long enough along the way to share with the pastor that I was deathly afraid of water).  Five years ago, for the second time in my life, I was baptized.  This time it wasn't a sprinkle of water, it was baptism by full immersion.  And it was well worth facing my desperate fear of water. I am, quite naturally, a person who remembers anniversaries, and so each year on this date I have stopped to consider my baptism.…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over, Pt. 3: The Letting Go in the Moving On

I am sitting here in a warm, comfortable condo in Telluride, Colorado, watching the snow fall for the second day in a row.  Out my window, I can see birch trees and clean white powder, chair lifts drifting upwards to freshly groomed mountain ski trails, and the sun as it begins to peak through the snow flakes in this destination resort that claims 300 + days of sunshine each year.  In this week when the people of our nation turn their hearts and minds to the idea of thanksgiving, I am sitting here feeling the deepest of thanks as I embrace the beauty of nature all around me, a brief moment of…
Read More

Breaking the silence with another’s words…

Yesterday, as I worked cleaning out the garden and preparing it for the winter ahead, I had to pull out a plant that I had nurtured for at least six years.  Years ago, at a local garden center, there were bargain plants in these tiny blue boxes for $0.99.  At the time, I really didn't understand much about gardening and so I thought that I would buy four or five different ones and that would be enough.  I did not know anything about arranging plants or about how far they might spread when they grew, etc. and so forth.  And from that tiny, tiny blue box, eventually, a six foot…
Read More

Me and Karl Barth

I am not a systematic theologian...my friends and acquaintances who love all things systematic have heard me make this proclamation over and over again.  During the course of my seminary education, my Episcopal friends did, however, open my mind and my heart to the idea that the idea of theology as a way of speaking about God was not inherently evil -- although they did not succeed at convincing me that Karl Barth was indeed my friend.    As usual, it took the work of an Old Testament scholar to do that. For the past few weeks, I have been enjoying a class at VTS about the prophetic books of…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over Part 2…the Meaning of Recovery

I am sitting here at my favorite outdoor table on our last morning in Mexico, writing -- I know I won't be able to post this until days after we get back, definitely after Pentecost.  I've simply been too lazy to take my computer laptop out of its bag and tussle with the wireless network connection.  But I'm enjoying my last bits of tropical trade winds for a while, and the reality that today is the day of Pentecost, well, I just needed to sit and write for just a moment. Pentecost is such an important day in the life of our faith -- it signifies the day when humanity…
Read More

What I’ve Learned So Far….the Graduation Blog

The night we gathered as a graduating class to talk about the work of our Capstone projects and theses was a celebratory one.  Congratulations, hugs, tears...a chance to spend time with our faculty advisers (even though they were in the throws of the final grading needed to get us all to graduation).  And in the midst of that, a friend who had witnessed many times my opening introduction of "I'm not from a diocese, I'm a Baptist" whispered in my ear, "The Episcopal Church welcomes you."   And the Episcopal church did welcome me.  It did not try to convert me, it did not try to change my theology.  Instead,…
Read More

The storm is passing over…

This morning my musical brain is full of the sounds of Charles Tindley's hymn (recast in its popular gospel arrangement), "The Storm is Passing Over" and this is not a random soundtrack for this day.  It is, in fact, a welcome, blessed message from my soul that I have been waiting a long time to hear, a message that as recently as yesterday seemed impossible. You see, yesterday was the one year anniversary of my seizure while travelling in Israel, the first recognizable symptom of the congenital heart valve defect that I had been living with for all these years.  It was the beginning of the long journey through doctors…
Read More

What I’ve learned so far, Part 5: I am an evangelical, but not an Evangelical

One of the great gifts of being a Baptist in an Episcopal world is that these two years have provided me the opportunity to refine my understanding of what I believe and how I live into my faith.   If you had asked me to list what I expected to learn during my months of study before I started, I would never have said these words:  that I would come to a better understand that I am and always have been an evangelical Christian. It turns out that, in light of the events of this week regarding World Vision, this is a very, very important theological understanding to grasp. But here…
Read More

Today…

Today is my birthday.  We won't discuss how many of those there have been, but it is safe to say that this particular birthday should be special.  It is a birthday that very well might not have happened.  Or certainly might have happened in a very different way than finding me in the midst of my too-too-busy schedule running to that finish line known as graduation. I might not have been here to say:  I'm healthy (even if I can't really say that I'm happy) and moving and exercising and learning and loving and doing all the things that make up a life. And yet, I feel no desire, frankly…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Five years later…

It has been five years.  Five years since I put on that worn out white robe and climbed those creaky, ancient stairs to the baptismal at the Calvary Baptist Church (only pausing long enough along the way to share with the pastor that I was deathly afraid of water).  Five years ago, for the second time in my life, I was baptized.  This time it wasn't a sprinkle of water, it was baptism by full immersion.  And it was well worth facing my desperate fear of water. I am, quite naturally, a person who remembers anniversaries, and so each year on this date I have stopped to consider my baptism.…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over, Pt. 3: The Letting Go in the Moving On

I am sitting here in a warm, comfortable condo in Telluride, Colorado, watching the snow fall for the second day in a row.  Out my window, I can see birch trees and clean white powder, chair lifts drifting upwards to freshly groomed mountain ski trails, and the sun as it begins to peak through the snow flakes in this destination resort that claims 300 + days of sunshine each year.  In this week when the people of our nation turn their hearts and minds to the idea of thanksgiving, I am sitting here feeling the deepest of thanks as I embrace the beauty of nature all around me, a brief moment of…
Read More

Breaking the silence with another’s words…

Yesterday, as I worked cleaning out the garden and preparing it for the winter ahead, I had to pull out a plant that I had nurtured for at least six years.  Years ago, at a local garden center, there were bargain plants in these tiny blue boxes for $0.99.  At the time, I really didn't understand much about gardening and so I thought that I would buy four or five different ones and that would be enough.  I did not know anything about arranging plants or about how far they might spread when they grew, etc. and so forth.  And from that tiny, tiny blue box, eventually, a six foot…
Read More

Me and Karl Barth

I am not a systematic theologian...my friends and acquaintances who love all things systematic have heard me make this proclamation over and over again.  During the course of my seminary education, my Episcopal friends did, however, open my mind and my heart to the idea that the idea of theology as a way of speaking about God was not inherently evil -- although they did not succeed at convincing me that Karl Barth was indeed my friend.    As usual, it took the work of an Old Testament scholar to do that. For the past few weeks, I have been enjoying a class at VTS about the prophetic books of…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over Part 2…the Meaning of Recovery

I am sitting here at my favorite outdoor table on our last morning in Mexico, writing -- I know I won't be able to post this until days after we get back, definitely after Pentecost.  I've simply been too lazy to take my computer laptop out of its bag and tussle with the wireless network connection.  But I'm enjoying my last bits of tropical trade winds for a while, and the reality that today is the day of Pentecost, well, I just needed to sit and write for just a moment. Pentecost is such an important day in the life of our faith -- it signifies the day when humanity…
Read More

What I’ve Learned So Far….the Graduation Blog

The night we gathered as a graduating class to talk about the work of our Capstone projects and theses was a celebratory one.  Congratulations, hugs, tears...a chance to spend time with our faculty advisers (even though they were in the throws of the final grading needed to get us all to graduation).  And in the midst of that, a friend who had witnessed many times my opening introduction of "I'm not from a diocese, I'm a Baptist" whispered in my ear, "The Episcopal Church welcomes you."   And the Episcopal church did welcome me.  It did not try to convert me, it did not try to change my theology.  Instead,…
Read More

The storm is passing over…

This morning my musical brain is full of the sounds of Charles Tindley's hymn (recast in its popular gospel arrangement), "The Storm is Passing Over" and this is not a random soundtrack for this day.  It is, in fact, a welcome, blessed message from my soul that I have been waiting a long time to hear, a message that as recently as yesterday seemed impossible. You see, yesterday was the one year anniversary of my seizure while travelling in Israel, the first recognizable symptom of the congenital heart valve defect that I had been living with for all these years.  It was the beginning of the long journey through doctors…
Read More

What I’ve learned so far, Part 5: I am an evangelical, but not an Evangelical

One of the great gifts of being a Baptist in an Episcopal world is that these two years have provided me the opportunity to refine my understanding of what I believe and how I live into my faith.   If you had asked me to list what I expected to learn during my months of study before I started, I would never have said these words:  that I would come to a better understand that I am and always have been an evangelical Christian. It turns out that, in light of the events of this week regarding World Vision, this is a very, very important theological understanding to grasp. But here…
Read More

Today…

Today is my birthday.  We won't discuss how many of those there have been, but it is safe to say that this particular birthday should be special.  It is a birthday that very well might not have happened.  Or certainly might have happened in a very different way than finding me in the midst of my too-too-busy schedule running to that finish line known as graduation. I might not have been here to say:  I'm healthy (even if I can't really say that I'm happy) and moving and exercising and learning and loving and doing all the things that make up a life. And yet, I feel no desire, frankly…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Five years later…

It has been five years.  Five years since I put on that worn out white robe and climbed those creaky, ancient stairs to the baptismal at the Calvary Baptist Church (only pausing long enough along the way to share with the pastor that I was deathly afraid of water).  Five years ago, for the second time in my life, I was baptized.  This time it wasn't a sprinkle of water, it was baptism by full immersion.  And it was well worth facing my desperate fear of water. I am, quite naturally, a person who remembers anniversaries, and so each year on this date I have stopped to consider my baptism.…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over, Pt. 3: The Letting Go in the Moving On

I am sitting here in a warm, comfortable condo in Telluride, Colorado, watching the snow fall for the second day in a row.  Out my window, I can see birch trees and clean white powder, chair lifts drifting upwards to freshly groomed mountain ski trails, and the sun as it begins to peak through the snow flakes in this destination resort that claims 300 + days of sunshine each year.  In this week when the people of our nation turn their hearts and minds to the idea of thanksgiving, I am sitting here feeling the deepest of thanks as I embrace the beauty of nature all around me, a brief moment of…
Read More

Breaking the silence with another’s words…

Yesterday, as I worked cleaning out the garden and preparing it for the winter ahead, I had to pull out a plant that I had nurtured for at least six years.  Years ago, at a local garden center, there were bargain plants in these tiny blue boxes for $0.99.  At the time, I really didn't understand much about gardening and so I thought that I would buy four or five different ones and that would be enough.  I did not know anything about arranging plants or about how far they might spread when they grew, etc. and so forth.  And from that tiny, tiny blue box, eventually, a six foot…
Read More

Me and Karl Barth

I am not a systematic theologian...my friends and acquaintances who love all things systematic have heard me make this proclamation over and over again.  During the course of my seminary education, my Episcopal friends did, however, open my mind and my heart to the idea that the idea of theology as a way of speaking about God was not inherently evil -- although they did not succeed at convincing me that Karl Barth was indeed my friend.    As usual, it took the work of an Old Testament scholar to do that. For the past few weeks, I have been enjoying a class at VTS about the prophetic books of…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over Part 2…the Meaning of Recovery

I am sitting here at my favorite outdoor table on our last morning in Mexico, writing -- I know I won't be able to post this until days after we get back, definitely after Pentecost.  I've simply been too lazy to take my computer laptop out of its bag and tussle with the wireless network connection.  But I'm enjoying my last bits of tropical trade winds for a while, and the reality that today is the day of Pentecost, well, I just needed to sit and write for just a moment. Pentecost is such an important day in the life of our faith -- it signifies the day when humanity…
Read More

What I’ve Learned So Far….the Graduation Blog

The night we gathered as a graduating class to talk about the work of our Capstone projects and theses was a celebratory one.  Congratulations, hugs, tears...a chance to spend time with our faculty advisers (even though they were in the throws of the final grading needed to get us all to graduation).  And in the midst of that, a friend who had witnessed many times my opening introduction of "I'm not from a diocese, I'm a Baptist" whispered in my ear, "The Episcopal Church welcomes you."   And the Episcopal church did welcome me.  It did not try to convert me, it did not try to change my theology.  Instead,…
Read More

The storm is passing over…

This morning my musical brain is full of the sounds of Charles Tindley's hymn (recast in its popular gospel arrangement), "The Storm is Passing Over" and this is not a random soundtrack for this day.  It is, in fact, a welcome, blessed message from my soul that I have been waiting a long time to hear, a message that as recently as yesterday seemed impossible. You see, yesterday was the one year anniversary of my seizure while travelling in Israel, the first recognizable symptom of the congenital heart valve defect that I had been living with for all these years.  It was the beginning of the long journey through doctors…
Read More

What I’ve learned so far, Part 5: I am an evangelical, but not an Evangelical

One of the great gifts of being a Baptist in an Episcopal world is that these two years have provided me the opportunity to refine my understanding of what I believe and how I live into my faith.   If you had asked me to list what I expected to learn during my months of study before I started, I would never have said these words:  that I would come to a better understand that I am and always have been an evangelical Christian. It turns out that, in light of the events of this week regarding World Vision, this is a very, very important theological understanding to grasp. But here…
Read More

Today…

Today is my birthday.  We won't discuss how many of those there have been, but it is safe to say that this particular birthday should be special.  It is a birthday that very well might not have happened.  Or certainly might have happened in a very different way than finding me in the midst of my too-too-busy schedule running to that finish line known as graduation. I might not have been here to say:  I'm healthy (even if I can't really say that I'm happy) and moving and exercising and learning and loving and doing all the things that make up a life. And yet, I feel no desire, frankly…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Five years later…

It has been five years.  Five years since I put on that worn out white robe and climbed those creaky, ancient stairs to the baptismal at the Calvary Baptist Church (only pausing long enough along the way to share with the pastor that I was deathly afraid of water).  Five years ago, for the second time in my life, I was baptized.  This time it wasn't a sprinkle of water, it was baptism by full immersion.  And it was well worth facing my desperate fear of water. I am, quite naturally, a person who remembers anniversaries, and so each year on this date I have stopped to consider my baptism.…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over, Pt. 3: The Letting Go in the Moving On

I am sitting here in a warm, comfortable condo in Telluride, Colorado, watching the snow fall for the second day in a row.  Out my window, I can see birch trees and clean white powder, chair lifts drifting upwards to freshly groomed mountain ski trails, and the sun as it begins to peak through the snow flakes in this destination resort that claims 300 + days of sunshine each year.  In this week when the people of our nation turn their hearts and minds to the idea of thanksgiving, I am sitting here feeling the deepest of thanks as I embrace the beauty of nature all around me, a brief moment of…
Read More

Breaking the silence with another’s words…

Yesterday, as I worked cleaning out the garden and preparing it for the winter ahead, I had to pull out a plant that I had nurtured for at least six years.  Years ago, at a local garden center, there were bargain plants in these tiny blue boxes for $0.99.  At the time, I really didn't understand much about gardening and so I thought that I would buy four or five different ones and that would be enough.  I did not know anything about arranging plants or about how far they might spread when they grew, etc. and so forth.  And from that tiny, tiny blue box, eventually, a six foot…
Read More

Me and Karl Barth

I am not a systematic theologian...my friends and acquaintances who love all things systematic have heard me make this proclamation over and over again.  During the course of my seminary education, my Episcopal friends did, however, open my mind and my heart to the idea that the idea of theology as a way of speaking about God was not inherently evil -- although they did not succeed at convincing me that Karl Barth was indeed my friend.    As usual, it took the work of an Old Testament scholar to do that. For the past few weeks, I have been enjoying a class at VTS about the prophetic books of…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over Part 2…the Meaning of Recovery

I am sitting here at my favorite outdoor table on our last morning in Mexico, writing -- I know I won't be able to post this until days after we get back, definitely after Pentecost.  I've simply been too lazy to take my computer laptop out of its bag and tussle with the wireless network connection.  But I'm enjoying my last bits of tropical trade winds for a while, and the reality that today is the day of Pentecost, well, I just needed to sit and write for just a moment. Pentecost is such an important day in the life of our faith -- it signifies the day when humanity…
Read More

What I’ve Learned So Far….the Graduation Blog

The night we gathered as a graduating class to talk about the work of our Capstone projects and theses was a celebratory one.  Congratulations, hugs, tears...a chance to spend time with our faculty advisers (even though they were in the throws of the final grading needed to get us all to graduation).  And in the midst of that, a friend who had witnessed many times my opening introduction of "I'm not from a diocese, I'm a Baptist" whispered in my ear, "The Episcopal Church welcomes you."   And the Episcopal church did welcome me.  It did not try to convert me, it did not try to change my theology.  Instead,…
Read More

The storm is passing over…

This morning my musical brain is full of the sounds of Charles Tindley's hymn (recast in its popular gospel arrangement), "The Storm is Passing Over" and this is not a random soundtrack for this day.  It is, in fact, a welcome, blessed message from my soul that I have been waiting a long time to hear, a message that as recently as yesterday seemed impossible. You see, yesterday was the one year anniversary of my seizure while travelling in Israel, the first recognizable symptom of the congenital heart valve defect that I had been living with for all these years.  It was the beginning of the long journey through doctors…
Read More

What I’ve learned so far, Part 5: I am an evangelical, but not an Evangelical

One of the great gifts of being a Baptist in an Episcopal world is that these two years have provided me the opportunity to refine my understanding of what I believe and how I live into my faith.   If you had asked me to list what I expected to learn during my months of study before I started, I would never have said these words:  that I would come to a better understand that I am and always have been an evangelical Christian. It turns out that, in light of the events of this week regarding World Vision, this is a very, very important theological understanding to grasp. But here…
Read More

Today…

Today is my birthday.  We won't discuss how many of those there have been, but it is safe to say that this particular birthday should be special.  It is a birthday that very well might not have happened.  Or certainly might have happened in a very different way than finding me in the midst of my too-too-busy schedule running to that finish line known as graduation. I might not have been here to say:  I'm healthy (even if I can't really say that I'm happy) and moving and exercising and learning and loving and doing all the things that make up a life. And yet, I feel no desire, frankly…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Five years later…

It has been five years.  Five years since I put on that worn out white robe and climbed those creaky, ancient stairs to the baptismal at the Calvary Baptist Church (only pausing long enough along the way to share with the pastor that I was deathly afraid of water).  Five years ago, for the second time in my life, I was baptized.  This time it wasn't a sprinkle of water, it was baptism by full immersion.  And it was well worth facing my desperate fear of water. I am, quite naturally, a person who remembers anniversaries, and so each year on this date I have stopped to consider my baptism.…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over, Pt. 3: The Letting Go in the Moving On

I am sitting here in a warm, comfortable condo in Telluride, Colorado, watching the snow fall for the second day in a row.  Out my window, I can see birch trees and clean white powder, chair lifts drifting upwards to freshly groomed mountain ski trails, and the sun as it begins to peak through the snow flakes in this destination resort that claims 300 + days of sunshine each year.  In this week when the people of our nation turn their hearts and minds to the idea of thanksgiving, I am sitting here feeling the deepest of thanks as I embrace the beauty of nature all around me, a brief moment of…
Read More

Breaking the silence with another’s words…

Yesterday, as I worked cleaning out the garden and preparing it for the winter ahead, I had to pull out a plant that I had nurtured for at least six years.  Years ago, at a local garden center, there were bargain plants in these tiny blue boxes for $0.99.  At the time, I really didn't understand much about gardening and so I thought that I would buy four or five different ones and that would be enough.  I did not know anything about arranging plants or about how far they might spread when they grew, etc. and so forth.  And from that tiny, tiny blue box, eventually, a six foot…
Read More

Me and Karl Barth

I am not a systematic theologian...my friends and acquaintances who love all things systematic have heard me make this proclamation over and over again.  During the course of my seminary education, my Episcopal friends did, however, open my mind and my heart to the idea that the idea of theology as a way of speaking about God was not inherently evil -- although they did not succeed at convincing me that Karl Barth was indeed my friend.    As usual, it took the work of an Old Testament scholar to do that. For the past few weeks, I have been enjoying a class at VTS about the prophetic books of…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over Part 2…the Meaning of Recovery

I am sitting here at my favorite outdoor table on our last morning in Mexico, writing -- I know I won't be able to post this until days after we get back, definitely after Pentecost.  I've simply been too lazy to take my computer laptop out of its bag and tussle with the wireless network connection.  But I'm enjoying my last bits of tropical trade winds for a while, and the reality that today is the day of Pentecost, well, I just needed to sit and write for just a moment. Pentecost is such an important day in the life of our faith -- it signifies the day when humanity…
Read More

What I’ve Learned So Far….the Graduation Blog

The night we gathered as a graduating class to talk about the work of our Capstone projects and theses was a celebratory one.  Congratulations, hugs, tears...a chance to spend time with our faculty advisers (even though they were in the throws of the final grading needed to get us all to graduation).  And in the midst of that, a friend who had witnessed many times my opening introduction of "I'm not from a diocese, I'm a Baptist" whispered in my ear, "The Episcopal Church welcomes you."   And the Episcopal church did welcome me.  It did not try to convert me, it did not try to change my theology.  Instead,…
Read More

The storm is passing over…

This morning my musical brain is full of the sounds of Charles Tindley's hymn (recast in its popular gospel arrangement), "The Storm is Passing Over" and this is not a random soundtrack for this day.  It is, in fact, a welcome, blessed message from my soul that I have been waiting a long time to hear, a message that as recently as yesterday seemed impossible. You see, yesterday was the one year anniversary of my seizure while travelling in Israel, the first recognizable symptom of the congenital heart valve defect that I had been living with for all these years.  It was the beginning of the long journey through doctors…
Read More

What I’ve learned so far, Part 5: I am an evangelical, but not an Evangelical

One of the great gifts of being a Baptist in an Episcopal world is that these two years have provided me the opportunity to refine my understanding of what I believe and how I live into my faith.   If you had asked me to list what I expected to learn during my months of study before I started, I would never have said these words:  that I would come to a better understand that I am and always have been an evangelical Christian. It turns out that, in light of the events of this week regarding World Vision, this is a very, very important theological understanding to grasp. But here…
Read More

Today…

Today is my birthday.  We won't discuss how many of those there have been, but it is safe to say that this particular birthday should be special.  It is a birthday that very well might not have happened.  Or certainly might have happened in a very different way than finding me in the midst of my too-too-busy schedule running to that finish line known as graduation. I might not have been here to say:  I'm healthy (even if I can't really say that I'm happy) and moving and exercising and learning and loving and doing all the things that make up a life. And yet, I feel no desire, frankly…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Five years later…

It has been five years.  Five years since I put on that worn out white robe and climbed those creaky, ancient stairs to the baptismal at the Calvary Baptist Church (only pausing long enough along the way to share with the pastor that I was deathly afraid of water).  Five years ago, for the second time in my life, I was baptized.  This time it wasn't a sprinkle of water, it was baptism by full immersion.  And it was well worth facing my desperate fear of water. I am, quite naturally, a person who remembers anniversaries, and so each year on this date I have stopped to consider my baptism.…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over, Pt. 3: The Letting Go in the Moving On

I am sitting here in a warm, comfortable condo in Telluride, Colorado, watching the snow fall for the second day in a row.  Out my window, I can see birch trees and clean white powder, chair lifts drifting upwards to freshly groomed mountain ski trails, and the sun as it begins to peak through the snow flakes in this destination resort that claims 300 + days of sunshine each year.  In this week when the people of our nation turn their hearts and minds to the idea of thanksgiving, I am sitting here feeling the deepest of thanks as I embrace the beauty of nature all around me, a brief moment of…
Read More

Breaking the silence with another’s words…

Yesterday, as I worked cleaning out the garden and preparing it for the winter ahead, I had to pull out a plant that I had nurtured for at least six years.  Years ago, at a local garden center, there were bargain plants in these tiny blue boxes for $0.99.  At the time, I really didn't understand much about gardening and so I thought that I would buy four or five different ones and that would be enough.  I did not know anything about arranging plants or about how far they might spread when they grew, etc. and so forth.  And from that tiny, tiny blue box, eventually, a six foot…
Read More

Me and Karl Barth

I am not a systematic theologian...my friends and acquaintances who love all things systematic have heard me make this proclamation over and over again.  During the course of my seminary education, my Episcopal friends did, however, open my mind and my heart to the idea that the idea of theology as a way of speaking about God was not inherently evil -- although they did not succeed at convincing me that Karl Barth was indeed my friend.    As usual, it took the work of an Old Testament scholar to do that. For the past few weeks, I have been enjoying a class at VTS about the prophetic books of…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over Part 2…the Meaning of Recovery

I am sitting here at my favorite outdoor table on our last morning in Mexico, writing -- I know I won't be able to post this until days after we get back, definitely after Pentecost.  I've simply been too lazy to take my computer laptop out of its bag and tussle with the wireless network connection.  But I'm enjoying my last bits of tropical trade winds for a while, and the reality that today is the day of Pentecost, well, I just needed to sit and write for just a moment. Pentecost is such an important day in the life of our faith -- it signifies the day when humanity…
Read More

What I’ve Learned So Far….the Graduation Blog

The night we gathered as a graduating class to talk about the work of our Capstone projects and theses was a celebratory one.  Congratulations, hugs, tears...a chance to spend time with our faculty advisers (even though they were in the throws of the final grading needed to get us all to graduation).  And in the midst of that, a friend who had witnessed many times my opening introduction of "I'm not from a diocese, I'm a Baptist" whispered in my ear, "The Episcopal Church welcomes you."   And the Episcopal church did welcome me.  It did not try to convert me, it did not try to change my theology.  Instead,…
Read More

The storm is passing over…

This morning my musical brain is full of the sounds of Charles Tindley's hymn (recast in its popular gospel arrangement), "The Storm is Passing Over" and this is not a random soundtrack for this day.  It is, in fact, a welcome, blessed message from my soul that I have been waiting a long time to hear, a message that as recently as yesterday seemed impossible. You see, yesterday was the one year anniversary of my seizure while travelling in Israel, the first recognizable symptom of the congenital heart valve defect that I had been living with for all these years.  It was the beginning of the long journey through doctors…
Read More

What I’ve learned so far, Part 5: I am an evangelical, but not an Evangelical

One of the great gifts of being a Baptist in an Episcopal world is that these two years have provided me the opportunity to refine my understanding of what I believe and how I live into my faith.   If you had asked me to list what I expected to learn during my months of study before I started, I would never have said these words:  that I would come to a better understand that I am and always have been an evangelical Christian. It turns out that, in light of the events of this week regarding World Vision, this is a very, very important theological understanding to grasp. But here…
Read More

Today…

Today is my birthday.  We won't discuss how many of those there have been, but it is safe to say that this particular birthday should be special.  It is a birthday that very well might not have happened.  Or certainly might have happened in a very different way than finding me in the midst of my too-too-busy schedule running to that finish line known as graduation. I might not have been here to say:  I'm healthy (even if I can't really say that I'm happy) and moving and exercising and learning and loving and doing all the things that make up a life. And yet, I feel no desire, frankly…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Five years later…

It has been five years.  Five years since I put on that worn out white robe and climbed those creaky, ancient stairs to the baptismal at the Calvary Baptist Church (only pausing long enough along the way to share with the pastor that I was deathly afraid of water).  Five years ago, for the second time in my life, I was baptized.  This time it wasn't a sprinkle of water, it was baptism by full immersion.  And it was well worth facing my desperate fear of water. I am, quite naturally, a person who remembers anniversaries, and so each year on this date I have stopped to consider my baptism.…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over, Pt. 3: The Letting Go in the Moving On

I am sitting here in a warm, comfortable condo in Telluride, Colorado, watching the snow fall for the second day in a row.  Out my window, I can see birch trees and clean white powder, chair lifts drifting upwards to freshly groomed mountain ski trails, and the sun as it begins to peak through the snow flakes in this destination resort that claims 300 + days of sunshine each year.  In this week when the people of our nation turn their hearts and minds to the idea of thanksgiving, I am sitting here feeling the deepest of thanks as I embrace the beauty of nature all around me, a brief moment of…
Read More

Breaking the silence with another’s words…

Yesterday, as I worked cleaning out the garden and preparing it for the winter ahead, I had to pull out a plant that I had nurtured for at least six years.  Years ago, at a local garden center, there were bargain plants in these tiny blue boxes for $0.99.  At the time, I really didn't understand much about gardening and so I thought that I would buy four or five different ones and that would be enough.  I did not know anything about arranging plants or about how far they might spread when they grew, etc. and so forth.  And from that tiny, tiny blue box, eventually, a six foot…
Read More

Me and Karl Barth

I am not a systematic theologian...my friends and acquaintances who love all things systematic have heard me make this proclamation over and over again.  During the course of my seminary education, my Episcopal friends did, however, open my mind and my heart to the idea that the idea of theology as a way of speaking about God was not inherently evil -- although they did not succeed at convincing me that Karl Barth was indeed my friend.    As usual, it took the work of an Old Testament scholar to do that. For the past few weeks, I have been enjoying a class at VTS about the prophetic books of…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over Part 2…the Meaning of Recovery

I am sitting here at my favorite outdoor table on our last morning in Mexico, writing -- I know I won't be able to post this until days after we get back, definitely after Pentecost.  I've simply been too lazy to take my computer laptop out of its bag and tussle with the wireless network connection.  But I'm enjoying my last bits of tropical trade winds for a while, and the reality that today is the day of Pentecost, well, I just needed to sit and write for just a moment. Pentecost is such an important day in the life of our faith -- it signifies the day when humanity…
Read More

What I’ve Learned So Far….the Graduation Blog

The night we gathered as a graduating class to talk about the work of our Capstone projects and theses was a celebratory one.  Congratulations, hugs, tears...a chance to spend time with our faculty advisers (even though they were in the throws of the final grading needed to get us all to graduation).  And in the midst of that, a friend who had witnessed many times my opening introduction of "I'm not from a diocese, I'm a Baptist" whispered in my ear, "The Episcopal Church welcomes you."   And the Episcopal church did welcome me.  It did not try to convert me, it did not try to change my theology.  Instead,…
Read More

The storm is passing over…

This morning my musical brain is full of the sounds of Charles Tindley's hymn (recast in its popular gospel arrangement), "The Storm is Passing Over" and this is not a random soundtrack for this day.  It is, in fact, a welcome, blessed message from my soul that I have been waiting a long time to hear, a message that as recently as yesterday seemed impossible. You see, yesterday was the one year anniversary of my seizure while travelling in Israel, the first recognizable symptom of the congenital heart valve defect that I had been living with for all these years.  It was the beginning of the long journey through doctors…
Read More

What I’ve learned so far, Part 5: I am an evangelical, but not an Evangelical

One of the great gifts of being a Baptist in an Episcopal world is that these two years have provided me the opportunity to refine my understanding of what I believe and how I live into my faith.   If you had asked me to list what I expected to learn during my months of study before I started, I would never have said these words:  that I would come to a better understand that I am and always have been an evangelical Christian. It turns out that, in light of the events of this week regarding World Vision, this is a very, very important theological understanding to grasp. But here…
Read More

Today…

Today is my birthday.  We won't discuss how many of those there have been, but it is safe to say that this particular birthday should be special.  It is a birthday that very well might not have happened.  Or certainly might have happened in a very different way than finding me in the midst of my too-too-busy schedule running to that finish line known as graduation. I might not have been here to say:  I'm healthy (even if I can't really say that I'm happy) and moving and exercising and learning and loving and doing all the things that make up a life. And yet, I feel no desire, frankly…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Five years later…

It has been five years.  Five years since I put on that worn out white robe and climbed those creaky, ancient stairs to the baptismal at the Calvary Baptist Church (only pausing long enough along the way to share with the pastor that I was deathly afraid of water).  Five years ago, for the second time in my life, I was baptized.  This time it wasn't a sprinkle of water, it was baptism by full immersion.  And it was well worth facing my desperate fear of water. I am, quite naturally, a person who remembers anniversaries, and so each year on this date I have stopped to consider my baptism.…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over, Pt. 3: The Letting Go in the Moving On

I am sitting here in a warm, comfortable condo in Telluride, Colorado, watching the snow fall for the second day in a row.  Out my window, I can see birch trees and clean white powder, chair lifts drifting upwards to freshly groomed mountain ski trails, and the sun as it begins to peak through the snow flakes in this destination resort that claims 300 + days of sunshine each year.  In this week when the people of our nation turn their hearts and minds to the idea of thanksgiving, I am sitting here feeling the deepest of thanks as I embrace the beauty of nature all around me, a brief moment of…
Read More

Breaking the silence with another’s words…

Yesterday, as I worked cleaning out the garden and preparing it for the winter ahead, I had to pull out a plant that I had nurtured for at least six years.  Years ago, at a local garden center, there were bargain plants in these tiny blue boxes for $0.99.  At the time, I really didn't understand much about gardening and so I thought that I would buy four or five different ones and that would be enough.  I did not know anything about arranging plants or about how far they might spread when they grew, etc. and so forth.  And from that tiny, tiny blue box, eventually, a six foot…
Read More

Me and Karl Barth

I am not a systematic theologian...my friends and acquaintances who love all things systematic have heard me make this proclamation over and over again.  During the course of my seminary education, my Episcopal friends did, however, open my mind and my heart to the idea that the idea of theology as a way of speaking about God was not inherently evil -- although they did not succeed at convincing me that Karl Barth was indeed my friend.    As usual, it took the work of an Old Testament scholar to do that. For the past few weeks, I have been enjoying a class at VTS about the prophetic books of…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over Part 2…the Meaning of Recovery

I am sitting here at my favorite outdoor table on our last morning in Mexico, writing -- I know I won't be able to post this until days after we get back, definitely after Pentecost.  I've simply been too lazy to take my computer laptop out of its bag and tussle with the wireless network connection.  But I'm enjoying my last bits of tropical trade winds for a while, and the reality that today is the day of Pentecost, well, I just needed to sit and write for just a moment. Pentecost is such an important day in the life of our faith -- it signifies the day when humanity…
Read More

What I’ve Learned So Far….the Graduation Blog

The night we gathered as a graduating class to talk about the work of our Capstone projects and theses was a celebratory one.  Congratulations, hugs, tears...a chance to spend time with our faculty advisers (even though they were in the throws of the final grading needed to get us all to graduation).  And in the midst of that, a friend who had witnessed many times my opening introduction of "I'm not from a diocese, I'm a Baptist" whispered in my ear, "The Episcopal Church welcomes you."   And the Episcopal church did welcome me.  It did not try to convert me, it did not try to change my theology.  Instead,…
Read More

The storm is passing over…

This morning my musical brain is full of the sounds of Charles Tindley's hymn (recast in its popular gospel arrangement), "The Storm is Passing Over" and this is not a random soundtrack for this day.  It is, in fact, a welcome, blessed message from my soul that I have been waiting a long time to hear, a message that as recently as yesterday seemed impossible. You see, yesterday was the one year anniversary of my seizure while travelling in Israel, the first recognizable symptom of the congenital heart valve defect that I had been living with for all these years.  It was the beginning of the long journey through doctors…
Read More

What I’ve learned so far, Part 5: I am an evangelical, but not an Evangelical

One of the great gifts of being a Baptist in an Episcopal world is that these two years have provided me the opportunity to refine my understanding of what I believe and how I live into my faith.   If you had asked me to list what I expected to learn during my months of study before I started, I would never have said these words:  that I would come to a better understand that I am and always have been an evangelical Christian. It turns out that, in light of the events of this week regarding World Vision, this is a very, very important theological understanding to grasp. But here…
Read More

Today…

Today is my birthday.  We won't discuss how many of those there have been, but it is safe to say that this particular birthday should be special.  It is a birthday that very well might not have happened.  Or certainly might have happened in a very different way than finding me in the midst of my too-too-busy schedule running to that finish line known as graduation. I might not have been here to say:  I'm healthy (even if I can't really say that I'm happy) and moving and exercising and learning and loving and doing all the things that make up a life. And yet, I feel no desire, frankly…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Five years later…

It has been five years.  Five years since I put on that worn out white robe and climbed those creaky, ancient stairs to the baptismal at the Calvary Baptist Church (only pausing long enough along the way to share with the pastor that I was deathly afraid of water).  Five years ago, for the second time in my life, I was baptized.  This time it wasn't a sprinkle of water, it was baptism by full immersion.  And it was well worth facing my desperate fear of water. I am, quite naturally, a person who remembers anniversaries, and so each year on this date I have stopped to consider my baptism.…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over, Pt. 3: The Letting Go in the Moving On

I am sitting here in a warm, comfortable condo in Telluride, Colorado, watching the snow fall for the second day in a row.  Out my window, I can see birch trees and clean white powder, chair lifts drifting upwards to freshly groomed mountain ski trails, and the sun as it begins to peak through the snow flakes in this destination resort that claims 300 + days of sunshine each year.  In this week when the people of our nation turn their hearts and minds to the idea of thanksgiving, I am sitting here feeling the deepest of thanks as I embrace the beauty of nature all around me, a brief moment of…
Read More

Breaking the silence with another’s words…

Yesterday, as I worked cleaning out the garden and preparing it for the winter ahead, I had to pull out a plant that I had nurtured for at least six years.  Years ago, at a local garden center, there were bargain plants in these tiny blue boxes for $0.99.  At the time, I really didn't understand much about gardening and so I thought that I would buy four or five different ones and that would be enough.  I did not know anything about arranging plants or about how far they might spread when they grew, etc. and so forth.  And from that tiny, tiny blue box, eventually, a six foot…
Read More

Me and Karl Barth

I am not a systematic theologian...my friends and acquaintances who love all things systematic have heard me make this proclamation over and over again.  During the course of my seminary education, my Episcopal friends did, however, open my mind and my heart to the idea that the idea of theology as a way of speaking about God was not inherently evil -- although they did not succeed at convincing me that Karl Barth was indeed my friend.    As usual, it took the work of an Old Testament scholar to do that. For the past few weeks, I have been enjoying a class at VTS about the prophetic books of…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over Part 2…the Meaning of Recovery

I am sitting here at my favorite outdoor table on our last morning in Mexico, writing -- I know I won't be able to post this until days after we get back, definitely after Pentecost.  I've simply been too lazy to take my computer laptop out of its bag and tussle with the wireless network connection.  But I'm enjoying my last bits of tropical trade winds for a while, and the reality that today is the day of Pentecost, well, I just needed to sit and write for just a moment. Pentecost is such an important day in the life of our faith -- it signifies the day when humanity…
Read More

What I’ve Learned So Far….the Graduation Blog

The night we gathered as a graduating class to talk about the work of our Capstone projects and theses was a celebratory one.  Congratulations, hugs, tears...a chance to spend time with our faculty advisers (even though they were in the throws of the final grading needed to get us all to graduation).  And in the midst of that, a friend who had witnessed many times my opening introduction of "I'm not from a diocese, I'm a Baptist" whispered in my ear, "The Episcopal Church welcomes you."   And the Episcopal church did welcome me.  It did not try to convert me, it did not try to change my theology.  Instead,…
Read More

The storm is passing over…

This morning my musical brain is full of the sounds of Charles Tindley's hymn (recast in its popular gospel arrangement), "The Storm is Passing Over" and this is not a random soundtrack for this day.  It is, in fact, a welcome, blessed message from my soul that I have been waiting a long time to hear, a message that as recently as yesterday seemed impossible. You see, yesterday was the one year anniversary of my seizure while travelling in Israel, the first recognizable symptom of the congenital heart valve defect that I had been living with for all these years.  It was the beginning of the long journey through doctors…
Read More

What I’ve learned so far, Part 5: I am an evangelical, but not an Evangelical

One of the great gifts of being a Baptist in an Episcopal world is that these two years have provided me the opportunity to refine my understanding of what I believe and how I live into my faith.   If you had asked me to list what I expected to learn during my months of study before I started, I would never have said these words:  that I would come to a better understand that I am and always have been an evangelical Christian. It turns out that, in light of the events of this week regarding World Vision, this is a very, very important theological understanding to grasp. But here…
Read More

Today…

Today is my birthday.  We won't discuss how many of those there have been, but it is safe to say that this particular birthday should be special.  It is a birthday that very well might not have happened.  Or certainly might have happened in a very different way than finding me in the midst of my too-too-busy schedule running to that finish line known as graduation. I might not have been here to say:  I'm healthy (even if I can't really say that I'm happy) and moving and exercising and learning and loving and doing all the things that make up a life. And yet, I feel no desire, frankly…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Five years later…

It has been five years.  Five years since I put on that worn out white robe and climbed those creaky, ancient stairs to the baptismal at the Calvary Baptist Church (only pausing long enough along the way to share with the pastor that I was deathly afraid of water).  Five years ago, for the second time in my life, I was baptized.  This time it wasn't a sprinkle of water, it was baptism by full immersion.  And it was well worth facing my desperate fear of water. I am, quite naturally, a person who remembers anniversaries, and so each year on this date I have stopped to consider my baptism.…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over, Pt. 3: The Letting Go in the Moving On

I am sitting here in a warm, comfortable condo in Telluride, Colorado, watching the snow fall for the second day in a row.  Out my window, I can see birch trees and clean white powder, chair lifts drifting upwards to freshly groomed mountain ski trails, and the sun as it begins to peak through the snow flakes in this destination resort that claims 300 + days of sunshine each year.  In this week when the people of our nation turn their hearts and minds to the idea of thanksgiving, I am sitting here feeling the deepest of thanks as I embrace the beauty of nature all around me, a brief moment of…
Read More

Breaking the silence with another’s words…

Yesterday, as I worked cleaning out the garden and preparing it for the winter ahead, I had to pull out a plant that I had nurtured for at least six years.  Years ago, at a local garden center, there were bargain plants in these tiny blue boxes for $0.99.  At the time, I really didn't understand much about gardening and so I thought that I would buy four or five different ones and that would be enough.  I did not know anything about arranging plants or about how far they might spread when they grew, etc. and so forth.  And from that tiny, tiny blue box, eventually, a six foot…
Read More

Me and Karl Barth

I am not a systematic theologian...my friends and acquaintances who love all things systematic have heard me make this proclamation over and over again.  During the course of my seminary education, my Episcopal friends did, however, open my mind and my heart to the idea that the idea of theology as a way of speaking about God was not inherently evil -- although they did not succeed at convincing me that Karl Barth was indeed my friend.    As usual, it took the work of an Old Testament scholar to do that. For the past few weeks, I have been enjoying a class at VTS about the prophetic books of…
Read More

The Storm is Passing Over Part 2…the Meaning of Recovery

I am sitting here at my favorite outdoor table on our last morning in Mexico, writing -- I know I won't be able to post this until days after we get back, definitely after Pentecost.  I've simply been too lazy to take my computer laptop out of its bag and tussle with the wireless network connection.  But I'm enjoying my last bits of tropical trade winds for a while, and the reality that today is the day of Pentecost, well, I just needed to sit and write for just a moment. Pentecost is such an important day in the life of our faith -- it signifies the day when humanity…
Read More

What I’ve Learned So Far….the Graduation Blog

The night we gathered as a graduating class to talk about the work of our Capstone projects and theses was a celebratory one.  Congratulations, hugs, tears...a chance to spend time with our faculty advisers (even though they were in the throws of the final grading needed to get us all to graduation).  And in the midst of that, a friend who had witnessed many times my opening introduction of "I'm not from a diocese, I'm a Baptist" whispered in my ear, "The Episcopal Church welcomes you."   And the Episcopal church did welcome me.  It did not try to convert me, it did not try to change my theology.  Instead,…
Read More

The storm is passing over…

This morning my musical brain is full of the sounds of Charles Tindley's hymn (recast in its popular gospel arrangement), "The Storm is Passing Over" and this is not a random soundtrack for this day.  It is, in fact, a welcome, blessed message from my soul that I have been waiting a long time to hear, a message that as recently as yesterday seemed impossible. You see, yesterday was the one year anniversary of my seizure while travelling in Israel, the first recognizable symptom of the congenital heart valve defect that I had been living with for all these years.  It was the beginning of the long journey through doctors…
Read More

What I’ve learned so far, Part 5: I am an evangelical, but not an Evangelical

One of the great gifts of being a Baptist in an Episcopal world is that these two years have provided me the opportunity to refine my understanding of what I believe and how I live into my faith.   If you had asked me to list what I expected to learn during my months of study before I started, I would never have said these words:  that I would come to a better understand that I am and always have been an evangelical Christian. It turns out that, in light of the events of this week regarding World Vision, this is a very, very important theological understanding to grasp. But here…
Read More

Today…

Today is my birthday.  We won't discuss how many of those there have been, but it is safe to say that this particular birthday should be special.  It is a birthday that very well might not have happened.  Or certainly might have happened in a very different way than finding me in the midst of my too-too-busy schedule running to that finish line known as graduation. I might not have been here to say:  I'm healthy (even if I can't really say that I'm happy) and moving and exercising and learning and loving and doing all the things that make up a life. And yet, I feel no desire, frankly…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More