Today, I just sit. Taking a pregnant pause from the constant demands of life on this early October afternoon, I find myself sitting on a simple wooden bench in the woods outside an abbey in southern Missouri. I am taking…
Reading the Bible without a leaf of hierarchy
Sunday before last in worship, we read from Genesis 3:8, a passage that says in the NRSV English translation: “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and…
Comedy or tragedy? The stories we tell ourselves about creation
“Wicked looks at what happened in the land of Oz — but from a different angle,” the most popular show on Broadway advertises. “So much happened before Dorothy dropped in.” As we shuffled out of the theater at the end of…
Why this seminary professor’s view of MrBeast and his friend is deadly and dangerous
I’m trying to like Southwestern Seminary these days, but Daniel Darling just made it that much harder. The Fort Worth, Texas, seminary is promoting a piece Darling wrote for the conservative World magazine. Darling serves as director of the Land…
In the beginning and the here and now: Genesis’ call to care for creation
The Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas, should not be confused with the Creation Museum, in Petersburg, Ky. Both museums have a Noah’s Ark, but the one in Texas is only a 25-foot replica, while the one in Kentucky…
Creation and the environment: ‘Where does God fit into all this?’
A couple of months ago, I attended a gathering with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and had the opportunity to be a part of a Q&A session with him afterward. One elderly woman asked him, “Where does God fit into all…
With a change in perspective, a new, more modest standard of living is possible
In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Rebecca Solnit suggested, “Much of the reluctance to do what climate change requires comes from the assumption that it means trading abundance for austerity and trading all our stuff and conveniences for less…
God’s pronouns are they/them
God transcends gender. Theologically speaking, God is nonbinary. That means in English, God’s pronouns are they/them. God is trans. I’d love to say this thought was originally mine, but that would be another cis white man commandeering someone else’s thought,…
The rest we must have
My 9-year-old son has formally declared sleep his nemesis. “It’s so boring,” he complains. “I have too much I want to do.” He is, and always has been, wide awake and ready to play or create by 5:00 a.m. He…