On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner spoke his final words, and these words later became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement: “I can’t breathe.” There is something, though, that you may not know about these words. The illegal choke hold that the police officer used to pin him to the sidewalk was … read more
While cloistered away in our apartment on Bellevue, I have been spending some time, among all the zooming and homeschooling and driveway exercising, reading from my favorite Greek theologian, Maximus the Confessor. I am finding him to be full of wisdom for moments like these that require some slowing down. Maximus writes in Ambiguum 7 […]
Perhaps the first thing is to grieve. Before we get angry about the death of coral reefs, the politics that allow the Amazon forests to burn, the economic pressures that are aggravating the coronavirus epidemic. Before we organize to pressure governments and businesses to think about the future and not just the next election or […]
Psalm 30, 32, 42, 43 • Haggai 2:1-19 • Matthew 24:1-14 Catholicity: the word comes from the Greek for “universal,” or “according to the whole.” The ancient idea that the church of Jesus Christ is catholic is the insistence that the healing, or salvation, that Jesus offers is entirely unboundaried. In the gospel today, when […]
This fall, Sowing Holy Question will explore questions of stewardship, reflecting theologically on practical decisions about money, possessions, ecology and our connection to God’s creation. Jesus’s teachings on money can be a little embarrassing. Often it comes in the form of direct address, and this from the master of indirect communication and one-off parable. It’s a […]
Psalm 30, 32, 42, 43 • Isaiah 8:1–15 • Luke 22:31–38 Something has changed in Luke 22. The storm that has been gathering is about to break. It is “the hour of darkness,” “the time of trial.” Where Jesus once told his followers to travel lightly and to depend on the hospitality of villagers, now […]
This past summer, I began exploring the Enneagram, a grid of personality/spirituality types you generally see depicted in that vaguely satanic-looking nine-point star within a circle. I’ve heard about it from students and colleagues over the years, and I decided it was time to see for myself. I read Chistopher Heurtz’s helpful book The […]
<<Return to Advent Meditations page Psalm 38; 119:25-48; Amos 8:1-14; Matt. 23:1-12; Rev. 1:17-2:7 “He said, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said ‘A basket of summer fruit.’” Alongside the Adventide expectation of grace and favor, there comes also the promise of God’s judgment on injustice. Do we notice, as the prophets and psalmists […]
C.S. Lewis once said that if we could really see another person—any other person—as God sees her and made her to be, we would be tempted to fall to our knees and worship her as a god. From a classical Christian point of view, that is not hyperbole. Jesus reminded the Pharisees of the […]
It’s Ash Wednesday morning as I write these words, and in a few hours I will hear myself and others invited “to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” What are we denying and negating, when we choose […]