This morning, like many who attend a worship service that follows the Revised Common Lectionary, I heard a sermon from John 12 about Mary pouring the expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet and Judas protesting about how the money could have been used otherwise. This is Mary, sister of Martha, who is also famous for wanting…
This week, I had to do an online training for work on cyber security. I was five or six screens in when they presented the “threat landscape.” The Oxford dictionary says the word threat finds its roots in German and Old English words that mean oppression, grieve, and irritate, which is an interesting combination. the…
About three years ago, I had a cortisone shot in my knee. It helped up until last December when they gave me another one and sent me to physical therapy. Neither was effective; in fact, the therapy made things worse, so I stopped going. Last month I went back to my doctor and he scheduled…
My father loved the story of Esther. I guess he probably told it to me for the first time when I was six or seven. I don’t know how many times he repeated it just to get to the part where Mordecai says to her, “Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom…
I spent last week in Texas on a work trip that centered around the New Story Festival organized by Gareth Higgins and Brian McLaren that focused on the myth of redemptive violence, which is a term coined by theologian Walter Wink to describe the belief that we can bring order out of chaos through brutal…
march madness when I got to the tiny house I was greeted by Elsa and Lily they are backyard chickens whose tinier house is next to mine they did not invite me in but saw to it that I found my place this morning they were busy as I stepped out to greet my host…
I am fortunate to be driving across Texas just as the bluebonnets are blooming. Here’s where they took me. among the wildflowers the old pickup rolled to a stop on the shoulder of the two-lane road the gravel spoke underneath the worn boots of the workmen who walked to the front of the truck that…
To paraphrase an old commercial, “I don’t play basketball, but I watch it on TV.” Actually, I played on one team when I was in sixth grade. We were on leave from Africa and living in Fort Worth. I was on the Royal Ambassadors team for our church. (If you don’t know what Royal Ambassadors…
the space between our sufferings this is one of those nights when the day has been long and I’m looking for words in a blank book of an evening because I promised I would have something to say I promised to meet you here I have riffled through the pages of my memory hoping a…
someone is always leaving I was twelve years old before I met someone who had never moved and I discovered I was the strange one because I was accustomed to suitcases I was twenty-nine before I had friend for ten years and had stayed close enough to grow our friendship face to face instead of…