Summer sticks to her skirt sumptuously, in the shiny gray fabric hanging loosely from her curves. Her chestnut eyes, apparently hidden from strangers; her simple but graceful face, unpainted by Madison Avenue; and her straight black hair, parted down...
a father for whom everything is an unshakable duty, for whom there is a right way and a wrong way and nothing in between, a father whose compound of ambitions, biases, and beliefs is so unruffled by careful thinking that he isn’t as easy to escape ...
And since we don’t just forget things because they don’t matter but also forget things because they matter too much because each of us remembers and forgets in a pattern whose labyrinthine windings are an identification mark no less distinctive t...
In serving as a pastor for over thirty years, I have seen some remarkable transformations and I’ve seen some big disappointments. I have two observations. First, where there has been lasting change, the common factor, in every case, is that the Wor...
I miss the honor of serving as a parish pastor. There is nothing quite like it. The most challenging aspect of the job is that you just can't please everybody all the time, no matter how hard you try. But the greatest honor of the office, from my per...
I’d forgotten how enlivening it could feel, seeing clearly and far. Aridity frees light. It also unleashes grandeur. The earth here wasn’t cloaked in forest, nor draped in green. Green was pastoral, peaceful, mild. Desert beauty was “sublime”...
Protestants at one time were confident that their free form of confession was a vast improvement upon Catholic private confession to a priest because it is voluntary, demystified, and not routinized. But amid the acids of modernity it has volunteered...
We must admit that simply knowing the contents of the Bible is not a sure route to spiritual growth. There is an aweful assumption in evangelical churches that if we can just get the Word of God into people's heads, then the Spirit of God will apply ...
The strange thing about adulthood, when you're single, is that it's possible to go for fairly extended periods without facing blatant sin against. Sure there was plenty of sin against God but with such infrequent consequence - it was easy to self-con...
From my father I heard only these words: "But you were born for such a day as this." He closed the book and my mother joined him in embracing me. They prayed over me and they gave me a blessing. And some blessings, like the one my conservative Christ...
Through the half-open door in one room of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain th...
If a night-moth were to concentrate its will on flying to a star or some equally unattainable object, it wouldn't succeed. Only, it wouldn't even try in the first place. A moth confines its search to what has sense and value for it, what it needs, wh...
Randal Graves: I thought you weren't even allowed to watch a lot of TV in your house cause you're all Christian and shit. Elias: Well, as it turns out, cars and trucks that turn into robots aren't really that blasphemous. Because my pastor says that ...
I want to remind pastors and leaders that we do not own the church—God does. We aren't called to serve the church from a place of fear with our primary focus on protecting our boundaries. We are called to fling wide the doors, to invite to the banq...
I regretted what a serious teenager I'd been: There were no posters of pop stars or favorite movies, no girlish collection of photos or corsages. Instead there were paintings of sailboats, proper pastel pastorals, a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt. The...
The setting, concerns, and mood of The Woodlanders are consonant with the Wessex of the earlier novels. There is an element of nostalgia in Hardy’s treatment of the woodlands of Little Hintock. Although such rural economies were very much alive in ...
Drugs have a long history of use in magic in various cultures, and usually in the context of either ecstatic communal rituals or in personal vision quests. However compared to people in simple pastoral tribal situations most people in developed count...
Making life changing decisions are never easy but are a very important part of life. Some people will not like your decision and some may even get emotionally hurt. Ultimately it all comes back to what decisions are best for you. Remember this is "Yo...
A pastor struggled for years with sexual addiction, eventually becoming so despondent that hospitalized himself. He joined an inpatient group and was mostly silent as others shared. When he decided not to come one day, the leader found he had fallen ...
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to ...
there is a widespread notion in some of the most energetic contemporary Christian movements that the biblical call to reconciliation is solely about reconciling God and humanity, with no reference to social realities. In this view, preaching, teachin...
