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A friend forwarded on the following letter from a leader in the Coptic church in Egypt who will remain unnamed.  Five days ago authorities killed 26 peaceful protesters, most of them Christians speaking out against a recent deadly attack on a Coptic church (among a string of attacks without impunity): Dear Friends, Thank you for…

Most of us at one point or another have asked the question, “Why does God allow suffering?”  Frustratingly, the Bible I read never gives an answer.  Suffering is simply a given.  A bit like the bumper sticker, “Shit happens.” Except more than that, too.  Because while we as Christians do not have an answer to…

“Speak softly and carry a big stick,” goes the African proverb.  I think of it every time I jog past this sign near my house.  Because if there were ever a place where many of us have felt like we must “speak softly” and “carry a big stick,” it is in of all places “church.”…

I confess I’m a yard sale junkie.  On most any Saturday the signs in the neighborhood trigger those irrepressible hunter-gatherer instincts. In no time I am digging through other people’s junk looking for treasure. It is amazing, too, what turns up, and what I convince myself I can use.  Clothes, jewelry, books, CD’s, weird gadgets,…

Remember the crazy story about Peter and Jesus walking on water (Matthew 14:22-33)?  To refresh our memories…Peter and the disciples are out in a boat in the middle of the night when Jesus appears, taking a little stroll on the lake and looking a bit, well, ghostly.  (Who wouldn’t, after all, in such circumstances and…

A friend likes to say, “Small people, small messes.  Big people, big messes!” Have you ever wondered where God is in all of it? One of my favorite stories from Scripture is of the woman at the well (John 4).  If there were anyone who walked around with a great big sign on her forehead…

Her name was Damaris.  Ever wondered about her?  She appears in the form of an afterthought, (one of Luke’s “oh, by the way” comments), as one of the “few” who believed upon hearing Paul’s speech in the Areopagus (Acts 17:22-34).  Some biblical commentators guess that to have been mentioned as a woman she could only have been…

Not too long ago 29,000 Somali children were reported to have died from starvation, the crackdown in Syria and bombings in Libya continued, and the unemployment epidemic in our own country persisted in the face of debilitating squabbles in Washington. And, in a car driving north on I-75, half-listening to the headlines on NPR, I…

  Epektasis: it may sound like a venereal disease, but it is actually Latin for “perpetual progress;” and it has been around since the fourth century whenGregory of Nyssa coined the term as a way to explain his understanding of true perfection in the spiritual life.  True perfection, for Gregory, consisted not in reaching some elusive, Platonic…

Garrison Keillor read this poem by Wendell Berry on yesterday’s “The Writer’s Almanac”: IX. I go by a field where once I cultivated a few poor crops. It is now covered with young trees, for the forest that belongs here has come back and reclaimed its own. And I think of all the effort I have wasted and…
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