A Good Friday Meditation, Pt. 2: I Crucified Thee

My emotions around the images and stories we link to Good Friday are complicated at best. That is why over and over again, words are not sufficient for me:  I must turn to music.  And while the Isaac Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," speaks to the complex dance between sorry and love that is our human response to the life of Jesus, in particular the events at the end of his incarnated life,  it is Johann Heerman's Herzliebster Jesu  ( 1630) that speaks to the incredible guilt we can feel in our human failure to see the living God before us, each and every day. We know Heerman's fifteen…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Beginning the remembering…

I must confess that I am avoiding the news and the usual NPR sound track to my life because, well, I am striving to resist the growing tide of 9/11 remembrance stories.  It is not that I do not want to remember, in fact I can't help but remember....I just want to maintain some illusion of control over when I take time to remember and therefore when I give in to the emotions that come with those memories. But maybe because I have been thinking about the topics like art and sin, yesterday I was thinking about just what I was doing ten years ago -- not in the minute…
Read More

The weight of it all…

A year ago today, I was licensed to the Gospel Ministry at the Calvary Baptist Church.  As a member of my committee  (and someone whose grace and spirit I admire so deeply) said to me immediately afterward, in the grips of a welcome hug, "So, do you feel the weight of the Gospel call on your life yet?"   At the time, I probably thought that I did -- I certainly understood the solemnity of the choice that I had just made, the gravity of standing in front of my community and declaring it, the responsibility involved in asking for their confirmation of my call and the duty I had in…
Read More

Open mine eyes…

For various reasons, I had the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of study time with the Road to Emmaus story this week (Luke  24:13-35, in case you want to read it), and it has set me to pondering further some things that, well, I have been pondering.  As I was reading  from various commentaries, I was struck by one particular comment:  that, in the eyes of this analyst, one of the signs of a good story (particular a story written to instruct and guide) is that it is incomplete -- there are lots of "spaces" in the tale, allowing we the readers of that tale to fill in the…
Read More

What we need now are muscular Christians…

That's a quote from one of my old favorite movies, Chariots of Fire (1981), a quote which has stayed in my heart and brain these long years and which, in the past few days, has taken on a more vivid meaning  for me and a greater urgency in my life.  No, don't be concerned...I am not about to decide that I want to "bike a century" like one friend or to take up triathalon training like another.   Being a muscular Christian in the Eric Lidell sense of the phrase means something totally different to me.  That is what has become clear to me over the past week. I didn't realize…
Read More

The things our heart remembers most…

Last night in our Maundy Thursday service at Calvary Baptist Church, we sang a lot of music, but most poignant for me was the singing of Mozart's Ave Verum.  You see, Maundy Thursday is, well, my anniversary.  And it was Mozart's Ave Verum that we sang in 2006, the first night I attended a service at Calvary as a substitute singer.  And, it was on another Maundy Thursday that I made my decision to join, a decision that has changed so many things in my life. Maundy Thursday has always loomed large in my life of faith and church; as a child, my parents would always take me to the…
Read More

A Good Friday Meditation, Pt. 2: I Crucified Thee

My emotions around the images and stories we link to Good Friday are complicated at best. That is why over and over again, words are not sufficient for me:  I must turn to music.  And while the Isaac Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," speaks to the complex dance between sorry and love that is our human response to the life of Jesus, in particular the events at the end of his incarnated life,  it is Johann Heerman's Herzliebster Jesu  ( 1630) that speaks to the incredible guilt we can feel in our human failure to see the living God before us, each and every day. We know Heerman's fifteen…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Beginning the remembering…

I must confess that I am avoiding the news and the usual NPR sound track to my life because, well, I am striving to resist the growing tide of 9/11 remembrance stories.  It is not that I do not want to remember, in fact I can't help but remember....I just want to maintain some illusion of control over when I take time to remember and therefore when I give in to the emotions that come with those memories. But maybe because I have been thinking about the topics like art and sin, yesterday I was thinking about just what I was doing ten years ago -- not in the minute…
Read More

The weight of it all…

A year ago today, I was licensed to the Gospel Ministry at the Calvary Baptist Church.  As a member of my committee  (and someone whose grace and spirit I admire so deeply) said to me immediately afterward, in the grips of a welcome hug, "So, do you feel the weight of the Gospel call on your life yet?"   At the time, I probably thought that I did -- I certainly understood the solemnity of the choice that I had just made, the gravity of standing in front of my community and declaring it, the responsibility involved in asking for their confirmation of my call and the duty I had in…
Read More

Open mine eyes…

For various reasons, I had the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of study time with the Road to Emmaus story this week (Luke  24:13-35, in case you want to read it), and it has set me to pondering further some things that, well, I have been pondering.  As I was reading  from various commentaries, I was struck by one particular comment:  that, in the eyes of this analyst, one of the signs of a good story (particular a story written to instruct and guide) is that it is incomplete -- there are lots of "spaces" in the tale, allowing we the readers of that tale to fill in the…
Read More

What we need now are muscular Christians…

That's a quote from one of my old favorite movies, Chariots of Fire (1981), a quote which has stayed in my heart and brain these long years and which, in the past few days, has taken on a more vivid meaning  for me and a greater urgency in my life.  No, don't be concerned...I am not about to decide that I want to "bike a century" like one friend or to take up triathalon training like another.   Being a muscular Christian in the Eric Lidell sense of the phrase means something totally different to me.  That is what has become clear to me over the past week. I didn't realize…
Read More

The things our heart remembers most…

Last night in our Maundy Thursday service at Calvary Baptist Church, we sang a lot of music, but most poignant for me was the singing of Mozart's Ave Verum.  You see, Maundy Thursday is, well, my anniversary.  And it was Mozart's Ave Verum that we sang in 2006, the first night I attended a service at Calvary as a substitute singer.  And, it was on another Maundy Thursday that I made my decision to join, a decision that has changed so many things in my life. Maundy Thursday has always loomed large in my life of faith and church; as a child, my parents would always take me to the…
Read More

A Good Friday Meditation, Pt. 2: I Crucified Thee

My emotions around the images and stories we link to Good Friday are complicated at best. That is why over and over again, words are not sufficient for me:  I must turn to music.  And while the Isaac Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," speaks to the complex dance between sorry and love that is our human response to the life of Jesus, in particular the events at the end of his incarnated life,  it is Johann Heerman's Herzliebster Jesu  ( 1630) that speaks to the incredible guilt we can feel in our human failure to see the living God before us, each and every day. We know Heerman's fifteen…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Beginning the remembering…

I must confess that I am avoiding the news and the usual NPR sound track to my life because, well, I am striving to resist the growing tide of 9/11 remembrance stories.  It is not that I do not want to remember, in fact I can't help but remember....I just want to maintain some illusion of control over when I take time to remember and therefore when I give in to the emotions that come with those memories. But maybe because I have been thinking about the topics like art and sin, yesterday I was thinking about just what I was doing ten years ago -- not in the minute…
Read More

The weight of it all…

A year ago today, I was licensed to the Gospel Ministry at the Calvary Baptist Church.  As a member of my committee  (and someone whose grace and spirit I admire so deeply) said to me immediately afterward, in the grips of a welcome hug, "So, do you feel the weight of the Gospel call on your life yet?"   At the time, I probably thought that I did -- I certainly understood the solemnity of the choice that I had just made, the gravity of standing in front of my community and declaring it, the responsibility involved in asking for their confirmation of my call and the duty I had in…
Read More

Open mine eyes…

For various reasons, I had the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of study time with the Road to Emmaus story this week (Luke  24:13-35, in case you want to read it), and it has set me to pondering further some things that, well, I have been pondering.  As I was reading  from various commentaries, I was struck by one particular comment:  that, in the eyes of this analyst, one of the signs of a good story (particular a story written to instruct and guide) is that it is incomplete -- there are lots of "spaces" in the tale, allowing we the readers of that tale to fill in the…
Read More

What we need now are muscular Christians…

That's a quote from one of my old favorite movies, Chariots of Fire (1981), a quote which has stayed in my heart and brain these long years and which, in the past few days, has taken on a more vivid meaning  for me and a greater urgency in my life.  No, don't be concerned...I am not about to decide that I want to "bike a century" like one friend or to take up triathalon training like another.   Being a muscular Christian in the Eric Lidell sense of the phrase means something totally different to me.  That is what has become clear to me over the past week. I didn't realize…
Read More

The things our heart remembers most…

Last night in our Maundy Thursday service at Calvary Baptist Church, we sang a lot of music, but most poignant for me was the singing of Mozart's Ave Verum.  You see, Maundy Thursday is, well, my anniversary.  And it was Mozart's Ave Verum that we sang in 2006, the first night I attended a service at Calvary as a substitute singer.  And, it was on another Maundy Thursday that I made my decision to join, a decision that has changed so many things in my life. Maundy Thursday has always loomed large in my life of faith and church; as a child, my parents would always take me to the…
Read More

A Good Friday Meditation, Pt. 2: I Crucified Thee

My emotions around the images and stories we link to Good Friday are complicated at best. That is why over and over again, words are not sufficient for me:  I must turn to music.  And while the Isaac Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," speaks to the complex dance between sorry and love that is our human response to the life of Jesus, in particular the events at the end of his incarnated life,  it is Johann Heerman's Herzliebster Jesu  ( 1630) that speaks to the incredible guilt we can feel in our human failure to see the living God before us, each and every day. We know Heerman's fifteen…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Beginning the remembering…

I must confess that I am avoiding the news and the usual NPR sound track to my life because, well, I am striving to resist the growing tide of 9/11 remembrance stories.  It is not that I do not want to remember, in fact I can't help but remember....I just want to maintain some illusion of control over when I take time to remember and therefore when I give in to the emotions that come with those memories. But maybe because I have been thinking about the topics like art and sin, yesterday I was thinking about just what I was doing ten years ago -- not in the minute…
Read More

The weight of it all…

A year ago today, I was licensed to the Gospel Ministry at the Calvary Baptist Church.  As a member of my committee  (and someone whose grace and spirit I admire so deeply) said to me immediately afterward, in the grips of a welcome hug, "So, do you feel the weight of the Gospel call on your life yet?"   At the time, I probably thought that I did -- I certainly understood the solemnity of the choice that I had just made, the gravity of standing in front of my community and declaring it, the responsibility involved in asking for their confirmation of my call and the duty I had in…
Read More

Open mine eyes…

For various reasons, I had the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of study time with the Road to Emmaus story this week (Luke  24:13-35, in case you want to read it), and it has set me to pondering further some things that, well, I have been pondering.  As I was reading  from various commentaries, I was struck by one particular comment:  that, in the eyes of this analyst, one of the signs of a good story (particular a story written to instruct and guide) is that it is incomplete -- there are lots of "spaces" in the tale, allowing we the readers of that tale to fill in the…
Read More

What we need now are muscular Christians…

That's a quote from one of my old favorite movies, Chariots of Fire (1981), a quote which has stayed in my heart and brain these long years and which, in the past few days, has taken on a more vivid meaning  for me and a greater urgency in my life.  No, don't be concerned...I am not about to decide that I want to "bike a century" like one friend or to take up triathalon training like another.   Being a muscular Christian in the Eric Lidell sense of the phrase means something totally different to me.  That is what has become clear to me over the past week. I didn't realize…
Read More

The things our heart remembers most…

Last night in our Maundy Thursday service at Calvary Baptist Church, we sang a lot of music, but most poignant for me was the singing of Mozart's Ave Verum.  You see, Maundy Thursday is, well, my anniversary.  And it was Mozart's Ave Verum that we sang in 2006, the first night I attended a service at Calvary as a substitute singer.  And, it was on another Maundy Thursday that I made my decision to join, a decision that has changed so many things in my life. Maundy Thursday has always loomed large in my life of faith and church; as a child, my parents would always take me to the…
Read More

A Good Friday Meditation, Pt. 2: I Crucified Thee

My emotions around the images and stories we link to Good Friday are complicated at best. That is why over and over again, words are not sufficient for me:  I must turn to music.  And while the Isaac Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," speaks to the complex dance between sorry and love that is our human response to the life of Jesus, in particular the events at the end of his incarnated life,  it is Johann Heerman's Herzliebster Jesu  ( 1630) that speaks to the incredible guilt we can feel in our human failure to see the living God before us, each and every day. We know Heerman's fifteen…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Beginning the remembering…

I must confess that I am avoiding the news and the usual NPR sound track to my life because, well, I am striving to resist the growing tide of 9/11 remembrance stories.  It is not that I do not want to remember, in fact I can't help but remember....I just want to maintain some illusion of control over when I take time to remember and therefore when I give in to the emotions that come with those memories. But maybe because I have been thinking about the topics like art and sin, yesterday I was thinking about just what I was doing ten years ago -- not in the minute…
Read More

The weight of it all…

A year ago today, I was licensed to the Gospel Ministry at the Calvary Baptist Church.  As a member of my committee  (and someone whose grace and spirit I admire so deeply) said to me immediately afterward, in the grips of a welcome hug, "So, do you feel the weight of the Gospel call on your life yet?"   At the time, I probably thought that I did -- I certainly understood the solemnity of the choice that I had just made, the gravity of standing in front of my community and declaring it, the responsibility involved in asking for their confirmation of my call and the duty I had in…
Read More

Open mine eyes…

For various reasons, I had the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of study time with the Road to Emmaus story this week (Luke  24:13-35, in case you want to read it), and it has set me to pondering further some things that, well, I have been pondering.  As I was reading  from various commentaries, I was struck by one particular comment:  that, in the eyes of this analyst, one of the signs of a good story (particular a story written to instruct and guide) is that it is incomplete -- there are lots of "spaces" in the tale, allowing we the readers of that tale to fill in the…
Read More

What we need now are muscular Christians…

That's a quote from one of my old favorite movies, Chariots of Fire (1981), a quote which has stayed in my heart and brain these long years and which, in the past few days, has taken on a more vivid meaning  for me and a greater urgency in my life.  No, don't be concerned...I am not about to decide that I want to "bike a century" like one friend or to take up triathalon training like another.   Being a muscular Christian in the Eric Lidell sense of the phrase means something totally different to me.  That is what has become clear to me over the past week. I didn't realize…
Read More

The things our heart remembers most…

Last night in our Maundy Thursday service at Calvary Baptist Church, we sang a lot of music, but most poignant for me was the singing of Mozart's Ave Verum.  You see, Maundy Thursday is, well, my anniversary.  And it was Mozart's Ave Verum that we sang in 2006, the first night I attended a service at Calvary as a substitute singer.  And, it was on another Maundy Thursday that I made my decision to join, a decision that has changed so many things in my life. Maundy Thursday has always loomed large in my life of faith and church; as a child, my parents would always take me to the…
Read More

A Good Friday Meditation, Pt. 2: I Crucified Thee

My emotions around the images and stories we link to Good Friday are complicated at best. That is why over and over again, words are not sufficient for me:  I must turn to music.  And while the Isaac Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," speaks to the complex dance between sorry and love that is our human response to the life of Jesus, in particular the events at the end of his incarnated life,  it is Johann Heerman's Herzliebster Jesu  ( 1630) that speaks to the incredible guilt we can feel in our human failure to see the living God before us, each and every day. We know Heerman's fifteen…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Beginning the remembering…

I must confess that I am avoiding the news and the usual NPR sound track to my life because, well, I am striving to resist the growing tide of 9/11 remembrance stories.  It is not that I do not want to remember, in fact I can't help but remember....I just want to maintain some illusion of control over when I take time to remember and therefore when I give in to the emotions that come with those memories. But maybe because I have been thinking about the topics like art and sin, yesterday I was thinking about just what I was doing ten years ago -- not in the minute…
Read More

The weight of it all…

A year ago today, I was licensed to the Gospel Ministry at the Calvary Baptist Church.  As a member of my committee  (and someone whose grace and spirit I admire so deeply) said to me immediately afterward, in the grips of a welcome hug, "So, do you feel the weight of the Gospel call on your life yet?"   At the time, I probably thought that I did -- I certainly understood the solemnity of the choice that I had just made, the gravity of standing in front of my community and declaring it, the responsibility involved in asking for their confirmation of my call and the duty I had in…
Read More

Open mine eyes…

For various reasons, I had the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of study time with the Road to Emmaus story this week (Luke  24:13-35, in case you want to read it), and it has set me to pondering further some things that, well, I have been pondering.  As I was reading  from various commentaries, I was struck by one particular comment:  that, in the eyes of this analyst, one of the signs of a good story (particular a story written to instruct and guide) is that it is incomplete -- there are lots of "spaces" in the tale, allowing we the readers of that tale to fill in the…
Read More

What we need now are muscular Christians…

That's a quote from one of my old favorite movies, Chariots of Fire (1981), a quote which has stayed in my heart and brain these long years and which, in the past few days, has taken on a more vivid meaning  for me and a greater urgency in my life.  No, don't be concerned...I am not about to decide that I want to "bike a century" like one friend or to take up triathalon training like another.   Being a muscular Christian in the Eric Lidell sense of the phrase means something totally different to me.  That is what has become clear to me over the past week. I didn't realize…
Read More

The things our heart remembers most…

Last night in our Maundy Thursday service at Calvary Baptist Church, we sang a lot of music, but most poignant for me was the singing of Mozart's Ave Verum.  You see, Maundy Thursday is, well, my anniversary.  And it was Mozart's Ave Verum that we sang in 2006, the first night I attended a service at Calvary as a substitute singer.  And, it was on another Maundy Thursday that I made my decision to join, a decision that has changed so many things in my life. Maundy Thursday has always loomed large in my life of faith and church; as a child, my parents would always take me to the…
Read More

A Good Friday Meditation, Pt. 2: I Crucified Thee

My emotions around the images and stories we link to Good Friday are complicated at best. That is why over and over again, words are not sufficient for me:  I must turn to music.  And while the Isaac Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," speaks to the complex dance between sorry and love that is our human response to the life of Jesus, in particular the events at the end of his incarnated life,  it is Johann Heerman's Herzliebster Jesu  ( 1630) that speaks to the incredible guilt we can feel in our human failure to see the living God before us, each and every day. We know Heerman's fifteen…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Beginning the remembering…

I must confess that I am avoiding the news and the usual NPR sound track to my life because, well, I am striving to resist the growing tide of 9/11 remembrance stories.  It is not that I do not want to remember, in fact I can't help but remember....I just want to maintain some illusion of control over when I take time to remember and therefore when I give in to the emotions that come with those memories. But maybe because I have been thinking about the topics like art and sin, yesterday I was thinking about just what I was doing ten years ago -- not in the minute…
Read More

The weight of it all…

A year ago today, I was licensed to the Gospel Ministry at the Calvary Baptist Church.  As a member of my committee  (and someone whose grace and spirit I admire so deeply) said to me immediately afterward, in the grips of a welcome hug, "So, do you feel the weight of the Gospel call on your life yet?"   At the time, I probably thought that I did -- I certainly understood the solemnity of the choice that I had just made, the gravity of standing in front of my community and declaring it, the responsibility involved in asking for their confirmation of my call and the duty I had in…
Read More

Open mine eyes…

For various reasons, I had the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of study time with the Road to Emmaus story this week (Luke  24:13-35, in case you want to read it), and it has set me to pondering further some things that, well, I have been pondering.  As I was reading  from various commentaries, I was struck by one particular comment:  that, in the eyes of this analyst, one of the signs of a good story (particular a story written to instruct and guide) is that it is incomplete -- there are lots of "spaces" in the tale, allowing we the readers of that tale to fill in the…
Read More

What we need now are muscular Christians…

That's a quote from one of my old favorite movies, Chariots of Fire (1981), a quote which has stayed in my heart and brain these long years and which, in the past few days, has taken on a more vivid meaning  for me and a greater urgency in my life.  No, don't be concerned...I am not about to decide that I want to "bike a century" like one friend or to take up triathalon training like another.   Being a muscular Christian in the Eric Lidell sense of the phrase means something totally different to me.  That is what has become clear to me over the past week. I didn't realize…
Read More

The things our heart remembers most…

Last night in our Maundy Thursday service at Calvary Baptist Church, we sang a lot of music, but most poignant for me was the singing of Mozart's Ave Verum.  You see, Maundy Thursday is, well, my anniversary.  And it was Mozart's Ave Verum that we sang in 2006, the first night I attended a service at Calvary as a substitute singer.  And, it was on another Maundy Thursday that I made my decision to join, a decision that has changed so many things in my life. Maundy Thursday has always loomed large in my life of faith and church; as a child, my parents would always take me to the…
Read More

A Good Friday Meditation, Pt. 2: I Crucified Thee

My emotions around the images and stories we link to Good Friday are complicated at best. That is why over and over again, words are not sufficient for me:  I must turn to music.  And while the Isaac Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," speaks to the complex dance between sorry and love that is our human response to the life of Jesus, in particular the events at the end of his incarnated life,  it is Johann Heerman's Herzliebster Jesu  ( 1630) that speaks to the incredible guilt we can feel in our human failure to see the living God before us, each and every day. We know Heerman's fifteen…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Beginning the remembering…

I must confess that I am avoiding the news and the usual NPR sound track to my life because, well, I am striving to resist the growing tide of 9/11 remembrance stories.  It is not that I do not want to remember, in fact I can't help but remember....I just want to maintain some illusion of control over when I take time to remember and therefore when I give in to the emotions that come with those memories. But maybe because I have been thinking about the topics like art and sin, yesterday I was thinking about just what I was doing ten years ago -- not in the minute…
Read More

The weight of it all…

A year ago today, I was licensed to the Gospel Ministry at the Calvary Baptist Church.  As a member of my committee  (and someone whose grace and spirit I admire so deeply) said to me immediately afterward, in the grips of a welcome hug, "So, do you feel the weight of the Gospel call on your life yet?"   At the time, I probably thought that I did -- I certainly understood the solemnity of the choice that I had just made, the gravity of standing in front of my community and declaring it, the responsibility involved in asking for their confirmation of my call and the duty I had in…
Read More

Open mine eyes…

For various reasons, I had the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of study time with the Road to Emmaus story this week (Luke  24:13-35, in case you want to read it), and it has set me to pondering further some things that, well, I have been pondering.  As I was reading  from various commentaries, I was struck by one particular comment:  that, in the eyes of this analyst, one of the signs of a good story (particular a story written to instruct and guide) is that it is incomplete -- there are lots of "spaces" in the tale, allowing we the readers of that tale to fill in the…
Read More

What we need now are muscular Christians…

That's a quote from one of my old favorite movies, Chariots of Fire (1981), a quote which has stayed in my heart and brain these long years and which, in the past few days, has taken on a more vivid meaning  for me and a greater urgency in my life.  No, don't be concerned...I am not about to decide that I want to "bike a century" like one friend or to take up triathalon training like another.   Being a muscular Christian in the Eric Lidell sense of the phrase means something totally different to me.  That is what has become clear to me over the past week. I didn't realize…
Read More

The things our heart remembers most…

Last night in our Maundy Thursday service at Calvary Baptist Church, we sang a lot of music, but most poignant for me was the singing of Mozart's Ave Verum.  You see, Maundy Thursday is, well, my anniversary.  And it was Mozart's Ave Verum that we sang in 2006, the first night I attended a service at Calvary as a substitute singer.  And, it was on another Maundy Thursday that I made my decision to join, a decision that has changed so many things in my life. Maundy Thursday has always loomed large in my life of faith and church; as a child, my parents would always take me to the…
Read More

A Good Friday Meditation, Pt. 2: I Crucified Thee

My emotions around the images and stories we link to Good Friday are complicated at best. That is why over and over again, words are not sufficient for me:  I must turn to music.  And while the Isaac Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," speaks to the complex dance between sorry and love that is our human response to the life of Jesus, in particular the events at the end of his incarnated life,  it is Johann Heerman's Herzliebster Jesu  ( 1630) that speaks to the incredible guilt we can feel in our human failure to see the living God before us, each and every day. We know Heerman's fifteen…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Beginning the remembering…

I must confess that I am avoiding the news and the usual NPR sound track to my life because, well, I am striving to resist the growing tide of 9/11 remembrance stories.  It is not that I do not want to remember, in fact I can't help but remember....I just want to maintain some illusion of control over when I take time to remember and therefore when I give in to the emotions that come with those memories. But maybe because I have been thinking about the topics like art and sin, yesterday I was thinking about just what I was doing ten years ago -- not in the minute…
Read More

The weight of it all…

A year ago today, I was licensed to the Gospel Ministry at the Calvary Baptist Church.  As a member of my committee  (and someone whose grace and spirit I admire so deeply) said to me immediately afterward, in the grips of a welcome hug, "So, do you feel the weight of the Gospel call on your life yet?"   At the time, I probably thought that I did -- I certainly understood the solemnity of the choice that I had just made, the gravity of standing in front of my community and declaring it, the responsibility involved in asking for their confirmation of my call and the duty I had in…
Read More

Open mine eyes…

For various reasons, I had the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of study time with the Road to Emmaus story this week (Luke  24:13-35, in case you want to read it), and it has set me to pondering further some things that, well, I have been pondering.  As I was reading  from various commentaries, I was struck by one particular comment:  that, in the eyes of this analyst, one of the signs of a good story (particular a story written to instruct and guide) is that it is incomplete -- there are lots of "spaces" in the tale, allowing we the readers of that tale to fill in the…
Read More

What we need now are muscular Christians…

That's a quote from one of my old favorite movies, Chariots of Fire (1981), a quote which has stayed in my heart and brain these long years and which, in the past few days, has taken on a more vivid meaning  for me and a greater urgency in my life.  No, don't be concerned...I am not about to decide that I want to "bike a century" like one friend or to take up triathalon training like another.   Being a muscular Christian in the Eric Lidell sense of the phrase means something totally different to me.  That is what has become clear to me over the past week. I didn't realize…
Read More

The things our heart remembers most…

Last night in our Maundy Thursday service at Calvary Baptist Church, we sang a lot of music, but most poignant for me was the singing of Mozart's Ave Verum.  You see, Maundy Thursday is, well, my anniversary.  And it was Mozart's Ave Verum that we sang in 2006, the first night I attended a service at Calvary as a substitute singer.  And, it was on another Maundy Thursday that I made my decision to join, a decision that has changed so many things in my life. Maundy Thursday has always loomed large in my life of faith and church; as a child, my parents would always take me to the…
Read More

A Good Friday Meditation, Pt. 2: I Crucified Thee

My emotions around the images and stories we link to Good Friday are complicated at best. That is why over and over again, words are not sufficient for me:  I must turn to music.  And while the Isaac Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," speaks to the complex dance between sorry and love that is our human response to the life of Jesus, in particular the events at the end of his incarnated life,  it is Johann Heerman's Herzliebster Jesu  ( 1630) that speaks to the incredible guilt we can feel in our human failure to see the living God before us, each and every day. We know Heerman's fifteen…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Beginning the remembering…

I must confess that I am avoiding the news and the usual NPR sound track to my life because, well, I am striving to resist the growing tide of 9/11 remembrance stories.  It is not that I do not want to remember, in fact I can't help but remember....I just want to maintain some illusion of control over when I take time to remember and therefore when I give in to the emotions that come with those memories. But maybe because I have been thinking about the topics like art and sin, yesterday I was thinking about just what I was doing ten years ago -- not in the minute…
Read More

The weight of it all…

A year ago today, I was licensed to the Gospel Ministry at the Calvary Baptist Church.  As a member of my committee  (and someone whose grace and spirit I admire so deeply) said to me immediately afterward, in the grips of a welcome hug, "So, do you feel the weight of the Gospel call on your life yet?"   At the time, I probably thought that I did -- I certainly understood the solemnity of the choice that I had just made, the gravity of standing in front of my community and declaring it, the responsibility involved in asking for their confirmation of my call and the duty I had in…
Read More

Open mine eyes…

For various reasons, I had the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of study time with the Road to Emmaus story this week (Luke  24:13-35, in case you want to read it), and it has set me to pondering further some things that, well, I have been pondering.  As I was reading  from various commentaries, I was struck by one particular comment:  that, in the eyes of this analyst, one of the signs of a good story (particular a story written to instruct and guide) is that it is incomplete -- there are lots of "spaces" in the tale, allowing we the readers of that tale to fill in the…
Read More

What we need now are muscular Christians…

That's a quote from one of my old favorite movies, Chariots of Fire (1981), a quote which has stayed in my heart and brain these long years and which, in the past few days, has taken on a more vivid meaning  for me and a greater urgency in my life.  No, don't be concerned...I am not about to decide that I want to "bike a century" like one friend or to take up triathalon training like another.   Being a muscular Christian in the Eric Lidell sense of the phrase means something totally different to me.  That is what has become clear to me over the past week. I didn't realize…
Read More

The things our heart remembers most…

Last night in our Maundy Thursday service at Calvary Baptist Church, we sang a lot of music, but most poignant for me was the singing of Mozart's Ave Verum.  You see, Maundy Thursday is, well, my anniversary.  And it was Mozart's Ave Verum that we sang in 2006, the first night I attended a service at Calvary as a substitute singer.  And, it was on another Maundy Thursday that I made my decision to join, a decision that has changed so many things in my life. Maundy Thursday has always loomed large in my life of faith and church; as a child, my parents would always take me to the…
Read More