I don’t know what disturbs me more: the reality that our nation and world are gripped in a fist of violence, hatred, blame and rage — or the reality that when I heard about yet another massacre on Sunday, this…
A Poem: Good Friday with the Methodists
I estimate forty of us— spread like thin gravy over the dim sanctuary. My own Baptist flock honors the noontime crucifixion, so tonight my son and I are free to join these Methodists who have hired four Gregorian chanters from the…
Love’s detour
“And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road” (Matthew 2:12). What would a Christmas pageant be without the three Wise Men?
Monks and mediation: what some Benedictines taught me about conflict
Seventy-five miles north of Santa Fe there’s a high desert canyon so ancient, so primordial, I half-expected to see pterodactyls in the sky instead of hawks as I steered my rental car along thirteen miles of single-lane dirt road. The…
Monks and mediation
By Julie Pennington-Russell Seventy-five miles north of Santa Fe there’s a high desert canyon so ancient, so primordial, I half-expected to see pterodactyls in the sky instead of hawks as I steered my rental car along 13 miles of single-lane…
Theological reflections on a bulldog
By Julie Pennington-Russell Our dear English Bulldog, Willie Boy, died last week. Hearts are still at half-mast around here. Back in December of 2005, in a moment of temporary insanity, Tim and I decided to grant our daughter Lucy’s persistent…
A tale of two Chucks
What a couple of agnostics taught me about congregational business. I have two friends who are particularly dear to me, both named Chuck. I first met The Chucks, as I call them, a few years ago in a writers’ group…
Naked church
Dear Church: if you bring good news to your community you won’t need to inform your neighbors. They already know. If you don’t—well, chances are everybody knows but you. Let’s get down to it: a church is either welcome relief…
By way of ashes
I was 24 and living in Mill Valley, Calif., when I first encountered Ash Wednesday. The Christian liturgical calendar had figured not much at all in my Southern Baptist experience to that point. But one February morning in 1983, spurred…