Place yourself in this situation. You have been told you have an illness for which conventional medicine does not have a known or desirable…
“A Few Like You”: Will the Church be the Church for Homosexual Christians?
Culture / Faith / Hospitality / Spirituality
In 1947, the great English poet W. H. Auden wrote a letter to his friend Ursula Niebuhr in which he confessed: “I don’t think…
The Uncomfortable Path to Maturity
Maturity and Flourishing / Spirituality
Long before I heard the term, disequilibrium was a part of the process of growth in my life. It’s the term educational theorists use…
The Gnostic Life
There are always people who talk a good deal about prayer, but don’t go near the creation theater. It is not that they don’t…
Seeing beyond the traces
Creation / Faith / Spirituality
One of the things I love about winter in Minnesota is how tracks are left to tell a story in newly fallen snow. In…
A Prayer for Terrorists
How does one pray in an age marred by terrorism? What words do I use, and for what do I ask? When I recognize…
Hearing amidst the clamor: 4 reflections
Maturity and Flourishing / Spirituality
On learning to hear A couple of years ago I published an essay on Art House America that I titled, “On Learning to Hear.”…
The life of faith in an evolving world: a sketch
In the beginning God created everything necessary for natural life. In time, the stars, planets, minerals, trees and all earthly beings would spring from…
Of Things Unseen
One day, in the early seventies, I walked into the bookstore instead of just past it, as was my habit. As a lover of…
Facing Guns and Horror
Community / Pluralistic World / Spirituality
In a thoughtful and pained reflection, “The Inexplicable: Inside the mind of a mass killer,” Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard tries to comprehend the…