“Tell us one interesting thing about yourself.” I’ve always disliked that “icebreaker” question, whether it occurs in a business gathering, conference breakout, Sunday school class, retreat setting or anywhere else. I always have considered my life to have been a…
Rand Paul gets mixed up on the ‘right side of history’
Donald Trump isn’t even in office yet and there’s already political flak between his intended “border czar” and the mayors of Denver and Boston over Trump’s plan to deport millions of illegal immigrants. Paul Homan warned the mayor of Boston,…
Kneeling by wildflowers
“Gone to the fields to be lovely. Be back when I’m through blooming.” From the poem Camas Lilies by Lynn Unger As a general rule, I believe in attempting to live out of a mentality of abundance over scarcity. However,…
Responding to the militarization of immigration policy
On Nov. 18, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced plans to declare a national emergency and deploy the military to enforce mass deportations as soon as he’s back in office. For many, this decision feels unprecedented, a stark departure from the…
Looking for America
Christopher Isherwood returned to Berlin in 1952, 19 years after he had left — fled actually — in 1933. In The Berlin Stories he recounts that return in photographic detail. The book was published in 1939 and is the basis…
Don’t shrink back
The late Bishop E. Anne Henning Byfield writes in Toward a Theology of Holy Black Rage, published in 2022: The nomination of Sen. Kamala Harris has again brought this issue of rage to center stage, especially with the church. It…
Letter to a friend concerned about my peace
So good to hear from you, John Doe! I think about you just about every day because almost every day I see the gift you gave me. I write the following with profound appreciation for your own message. There is,…
Keep walking
Head in hands, the disciples stared at their feet. These feet had walked faithfully ever since the first call to “Follow me.” Certain this way of life would usher in a new day and change the world, they had gone…
Living life ‘in the meantime’
I recently had breakfast with a colleague who finds himself wondering if he has one more move left in him. At the same time, he wonders whether he is now at an age when churches will simply pass over him…