Singing Along the Journey

Faith

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

Viva la Resistance…

No, I have not been mysteriously transported to the French Resistance and the fight against Nazi Germany, although, internally it might feel a bit like that.  And maybe “Long live the Resistance” is not really the sentiment that I want to express, because, really, I would like it to end – it just seems to be the reality of the past few weeks, and, particularly the last 48 hours. Resistance – you know, that gift from God that shines a light on something that needs our holy attention?  When you are in the middle of it, it certainly does not feel like a gift. There are lots of changes all around…
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

Star-shaped pegs, round holes, and obsessions…

The Lenten season is never a particularly easy one for me...I tend to take the set-apart nature of this time very seriously, and conduct my own very intense version of the 12-step "ruthless moral inventory" to the very maximum.  Throw in a little of the type of soul-searching and relationship review that precedes the commemoration of Yom Kippur, and add a dash of my own personal intensity, and well, you can imagine what these weeks are like inside my spirit and my head.  I have always loved the Lenten season, despite its difficulties -- but not this year. Without burdening those of you who kindly read what I write with…
Read More

Tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright…

Let me repeat that statement one more time:  tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright. This sentence danced through my brain recently while I was doing my daily trudge on the elliptical trainer (you know, the 40 minute walk that goes no where fast?).   It is the summary that occurs to me after a lengthy discussion I was having with a friend, in response to his exclamation following my excitement about a Lenten study group at my church at the Stations of the Cross: "I don't know why Protestants are always trying to be so Catholic!"  I know a lot of people raised as Catholic, but now practicing Protestant. I…
Read More

Authority, credentials, and the road less travelled…

Well, the Lenten season is, for me, off to a whizz-bang start.  Two Ash Wednesday services, five days of my personal spiritual discipline, a conversation with my spiritual director and one with my pastor (and let's not forget the total change in my relationship to all the water on the planet) and yes, my view of the world and my place in it is totally up-ended. I have a new, weird kind of clarity, and I realize that, when faced with that famous fork in the road, I have been looking right when I should have been looking left-- although not totally.  It has been more like I've been looking right,…
Read More

Public vs. private, again…

As the basis of my personal Lenten practice, I am using a book called Lent with Evelyn Underhill, edited by G. P. Mellick Belshaw.   For those of you who don't know who Evelyn Underhill is, she was prolific writer on the topics of mysticism, spiritual thought and practice, and worship; and a practicing spiritual director of the early 20th century.  Her early major work,  Mysticism (1911) remains the basic text on the topic; but her writings are numerous.  The Lenten devotional has been created from the whole corpus of her work. I can remember reading her book Mysticism during my undergraduate work in Medieval studies:  I too, shared her interest…
Read More

Living in baptism

I am a very, very fortunate person.  Through some twist of fate, it seems that a trip to the beach has, for the last few years, fallen on the week of my birthday.  So this year, again, I had the chance to celebrate the anniversary of my arrival on this little planet from a beach in Mexico. But this year was not by any imagination business as usual on our few days in the sun. This year, instead of sitting comfortably on my beach palapa bed  in the shade and watching the fun in the waves, I decided make a change.  I actually got in the water. Well, it wasn't really a decision -- not like deciding which book to…
Read More

Blessed are…

A week ago, I was supposed to fill in for Pastor Amy and lead the discussion in our Wednesday Night Words Bible Study while she was out of town, but 2011's wacky weird weather had other ideas -- that turned out to be the day of  the-wettest-ever-snowfall and the commute-beyond-all-description for so many people (remember the pictures of 100's of abandoned cars on the GW Parkway?).  It turned out to be a very good thing that we cancelled our get-together.  So I did the next best thing and distributed my outline to the group...and promised to write a little bit about Matthew 5:4, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they…
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

Viva la Resistance…

No, I have not been mysteriously transported to the French Resistance and the fight against Nazi Germany, although, internally it might feel a bit like that.  And maybe “Long live the Resistance” is not really the sentiment that I want to express, because, really, I would like it to end – it just seems to be the reality of the past few weeks, and, particularly the last 48 hours. Resistance – you know, that gift from God that shines a light on something that needs our holy attention?  When you are in the middle of it, it certainly does not feel like a gift. There are lots of changes all around…
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

Star-shaped pegs, round holes, and obsessions…

The Lenten season is never a particularly easy one for me...I tend to take the set-apart nature of this time very seriously, and conduct my own very intense version of the 12-step "ruthless moral inventory" to the very maximum.  Throw in a little of the type of soul-searching and relationship review that precedes the commemoration of Yom Kippur, and add a dash of my own personal intensity, and well, you can imagine what these weeks are like inside my spirit and my head.  I have always loved the Lenten season, despite its difficulties -- but not this year. Without burdening those of you who kindly read what I write with…
Read More

Tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright…

Let me repeat that statement one more time:  tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright. This sentence danced through my brain recently while I was doing my daily trudge on the elliptical trainer (you know, the 40 minute walk that goes no where fast?).   It is the summary that occurs to me after a lengthy discussion I was having with a friend, in response to his exclamation following my excitement about a Lenten study group at my church at the Stations of the Cross: "I don't know why Protestants are always trying to be so Catholic!"  I know a lot of people raised as Catholic, but now practicing Protestant. I…
Read More

Authority, credentials, and the road less travelled…

Well, the Lenten season is, for me, off to a whizz-bang start.  Two Ash Wednesday services, five days of my personal spiritual discipline, a conversation with my spiritual director and one with my pastor (and let's not forget the total change in my relationship to all the water on the planet) and yes, my view of the world and my place in it is totally up-ended. I have a new, weird kind of clarity, and I realize that, when faced with that famous fork in the road, I have been looking right when I should have been looking left-- although not totally.  It has been more like I've been looking right,…
Read More

Public vs. private, again…

As the basis of my personal Lenten practice, I am using a book called Lent with Evelyn Underhill, edited by G. P. Mellick Belshaw.   For those of you who don't know who Evelyn Underhill is, she was prolific writer on the topics of mysticism, spiritual thought and practice, and worship; and a practicing spiritual director of the early 20th century.  Her early major work,  Mysticism (1911) remains the basic text on the topic; but her writings are numerous.  The Lenten devotional has been created from the whole corpus of her work. I can remember reading her book Mysticism during my undergraduate work in Medieval studies:  I too, shared her interest…
Read More

Living in baptism

I am a very, very fortunate person.  Through some twist of fate, it seems that a trip to the beach has, for the last few years, fallen on the week of my birthday.  So this year, again, I had the chance to celebrate the anniversary of my arrival on this little planet from a beach in Mexico. But this year was not by any imagination business as usual on our few days in the sun. This year, instead of sitting comfortably on my beach palapa bed  in the shade and watching the fun in the waves, I decided make a change.  I actually got in the water. Well, it wasn't really a decision -- not like deciding which book to…
Read More

Blessed are…

A week ago, I was supposed to fill in for Pastor Amy and lead the discussion in our Wednesday Night Words Bible Study while she was out of town, but 2011's wacky weird weather had other ideas -- that turned out to be the day of  the-wettest-ever-snowfall and the commute-beyond-all-description for so many people (remember the pictures of 100's of abandoned cars on the GW Parkway?).  It turned out to be a very good thing that we cancelled our get-together.  So I did the next best thing and distributed my outline to the group...and promised to write a little bit about Matthew 5:4, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they…
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

Viva la Resistance…

No, I have not been mysteriously transported to the French Resistance and the fight against Nazi Germany, although, internally it might feel a bit like that.  And maybe “Long live the Resistance” is not really the sentiment that I want to express, because, really, I would like it to end – it just seems to be the reality of the past few weeks, and, particularly the last 48 hours. Resistance – you know, that gift from God that shines a light on something that needs our holy attention?  When you are in the middle of it, it certainly does not feel like a gift. There are lots of changes all around…
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

Star-shaped pegs, round holes, and obsessions…

The Lenten season is never a particularly easy one for me...I tend to take the set-apart nature of this time very seriously, and conduct my own very intense version of the 12-step "ruthless moral inventory" to the very maximum.  Throw in a little of the type of soul-searching and relationship review that precedes the commemoration of Yom Kippur, and add a dash of my own personal intensity, and well, you can imagine what these weeks are like inside my spirit and my head.  I have always loved the Lenten season, despite its difficulties -- but not this year. Without burdening those of you who kindly read what I write with…
Read More

Tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright…

Let me repeat that statement one more time:  tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright. This sentence danced through my brain recently while I was doing my daily trudge on the elliptical trainer (you know, the 40 minute walk that goes no where fast?).   It is the summary that occurs to me after a lengthy discussion I was having with a friend, in response to his exclamation following my excitement about a Lenten study group at my church at the Stations of the Cross: "I don't know why Protestants are always trying to be so Catholic!"  I know a lot of people raised as Catholic, but now practicing Protestant. I…
Read More

Authority, credentials, and the road less travelled…

Well, the Lenten season is, for me, off to a whizz-bang start.  Two Ash Wednesday services, five days of my personal spiritual discipline, a conversation with my spiritual director and one with my pastor (and let's not forget the total change in my relationship to all the water on the planet) and yes, my view of the world and my place in it is totally up-ended. I have a new, weird kind of clarity, and I realize that, when faced with that famous fork in the road, I have been looking right when I should have been looking left-- although not totally.  It has been more like I've been looking right,…
Read More

Public vs. private, again…

As the basis of my personal Lenten practice, I am using a book called Lent with Evelyn Underhill, edited by G. P. Mellick Belshaw.   For those of you who don't know who Evelyn Underhill is, she was prolific writer on the topics of mysticism, spiritual thought and practice, and worship; and a practicing spiritual director of the early 20th century.  Her early major work,  Mysticism (1911) remains the basic text on the topic; but her writings are numerous.  The Lenten devotional has been created from the whole corpus of her work. I can remember reading her book Mysticism during my undergraduate work in Medieval studies:  I too, shared her interest…
Read More

Living in baptism

I am a very, very fortunate person.  Through some twist of fate, it seems that a trip to the beach has, for the last few years, fallen on the week of my birthday.  So this year, again, I had the chance to celebrate the anniversary of my arrival on this little planet from a beach in Mexico. But this year was not by any imagination business as usual on our few days in the sun. This year, instead of sitting comfortably on my beach palapa bed  in the shade and watching the fun in the waves, I decided make a change.  I actually got in the water. Well, it wasn't really a decision -- not like deciding which book to…
Read More

Blessed are…

A week ago, I was supposed to fill in for Pastor Amy and lead the discussion in our Wednesday Night Words Bible Study while she was out of town, but 2011's wacky weird weather had other ideas -- that turned out to be the day of  the-wettest-ever-snowfall and the commute-beyond-all-description for so many people (remember the pictures of 100's of abandoned cars on the GW Parkway?).  It turned out to be a very good thing that we cancelled our get-together.  So I did the next best thing and distributed my outline to the group...and promised to write a little bit about Matthew 5:4, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they…
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

Viva la Resistance…

No, I have not been mysteriously transported to the French Resistance and the fight against Nazi Germany, although, internally it might feel a bit like that.  And maybe “Long live the Resistance” is not really the sentiment that I want to express, because, really, I would like it to end – it just seems to be the reality of the past few weeks, and, particularly the last 48 hours. Resistance – you know, that gift from God that shines a light on something that needs our holy attention?  When you are in the middle of it, it certainly does not feel like a gift. There are lots of changes all around…
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

Star-shaped pegs, round holes, and obsessions…

The Lenten season is never a particularly easy one for me...I tend to take the set-apart nature of this time very seriously, and conduct my own very intense version of the 12-step "ruthless moral inventory" to the very maximum.  Throw in a little of the type of soul-searching and relationship review that precedes the commemoration of Yom Kippur, and add a dash of my own personal intensity, and well, you can imagine what these weeks are like inside my spirit and my head.  I have always loved the Lenten season, despite its difficulties -- but not this year. Without burdening those of you who kindly read what I write with…
Read More

Tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright…

Let me repeat that statement one more time:  tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright. This sentence danced through my brain recently while I was doing my daily trudge on the elliptical trainer (you know, the 40 minute walk that goes no where fast?).   It is the summary that occurs to me after a lengthy discussion I was having with a friend, in response to his exclamation following my excitement about a Lenten study group at my church at the Stations of the Cross: "I don't know why Protestants are always trying to be so Catholic!"  I know a lot of people raised as Catholic, but now practicing Protestant. I…
Read More

Authority, credentials, and the road less travelled…

Well, the Lenten season is, for me, off to a whizz-bang start.  Two Ash Wednesday services, five days of my personal spiritual discipline, a conversation with my spiritual director and one with my pastor (and let's not forget the total change in my relationship to all the water on the planet) and yes, my view of the world and my place in it is totally up-ended. I have a new, weird kind of clarity, and I realize that, when faced with that famous fork in the road, I have been looking right when I should have been looking left-- although not totally.  It has been more like I've been looking right,…
Read More

Public vs. private, again…

As the basis of my personal Lenten practice, I am using a book called Lent with Evelyn Underhill, edited by G. P. Mellick Belshaw.   For those of you who don't know who Evelyn Underhill is, she was prolific writer on the topics of mysticism, spiritual thought and practice, and worship; and a practicing spiritual director of the early 20th century.  Her early major work,  Mysticism (1911) remains the basic text on the topic; but her writings are numerous.  The Lenten devotional has been created from the whole corpus of her work. I can remember reading her book Mysticism during my undergraduate work in Medieval studies:  I too, shared her interest…
Read More

Living in baptism

I am a very, very fortunate person.  Through some twist of fate, it seems that a trip to the beach has, for the last few years, fallen on the week of my birthday.  So this year, again, I had the chance to celebrate the anniversary of my arrival on this little planet from a beach in Mexico. But this year was not by any imagination business as usual on our few days in the sun. This year, instead of sitting comfortably on my beach palapa bed  in the shade and watching the fun in the waves, I decided make a change.  I actually got in the water. Well, it wasn't really a decision -- not like deciding which book to…
Read More

Blessed are…

A week ago, I was supposed to fill in for Pastor Amy and lead the discussion in our Wednesday Night Words Bible Study while she was out of town, but 2011's wacky weird weather had other ideas -- that turned out to be the day of  the-wettest-ever-snowfall and the commute-beyond-all-description for so many people (remember the pictures of 100's of abandoned cars on the GW Parkway?).  It turned out to be a very good thing that we cancelled our get-together.  So I did the next best thing and distributed my outline to the group...and promised to write a little bit about Matthew 5:4, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they…
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

Viva la Resistance…

No, I have not been mysteriously transported to the French Resistance and the fight against Nazi Germany, although, internally it might feel a bit like that.  And maybe “Long live the Resistance” is not really the sentiment that I want to express, because, really, I would like it to end – it just seems to be the reality of the past few weeks, and, particularly the last 48 hours. Resistance – you know, that gift from God that shines a light on something that needs our holy attention?  When you are in the middle of it, it certainly does not feel like a gift. There are lots of changes all around…
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

Star-shaped pegs, round holes, and obsessions…

The Lenten season is never a particularly easy one for me...I tend to take the set-apart nature of this time very seriously, and conduct my own very intense version of the 12-step "ruthless moral inventory" to the very maximum.  Throw in a little of the type of soul-searching and relationship review that precedes the commemoration of Yom Kippur, and add a dash of my own personal intensity, and well, you can imagine what these weeks are like inside my spirit and my head.  I have always loved the Lenten season, despite its difficulties -- but not this year. Without burdening those of you who kindly read what I write with…
Read More

Tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright…

Let me repeat that statement one more time:  tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright. This sentence danced through my brain recently while I was doing my daily trudge on the elliptical trainer (you know, the 40 minute walk that goes no where fast?).   It is the summary that occurs to me after a lengthy discussion I was having with a friend, in response to his exclamation following my excitement about a Lenten study group at my church at the Stations of the Cross: "I don't know why Protestants are always trying to be so Catholic!"  I know a lot of people raised as Catholic, but now practicing Protestant. I…
Read More

Authority, credentials, and the road less travelled…

Well, the Lenten season is, for me, off to a whizz-bang start.  Two Ash Wednesday services, five days of my personal spiritual discipline, a conversation with my spiritual director and one with my pastor (and let's not forget the total change in my relationship to all the water on the planet) and yes, my view of the world and my place in it is totally up-ended. I have a new, weird kind of clarity, and I realize that, when faced with that famous fork in the road, I have been looking right when I should have been looking left-- although not totally.  It has been more like I've been looking right,…
Read More

Public vs. private, again…

As the basis of my personal Lenten practice, I am using a book called Lent with Evelyn Underhill, edited by G. P. Mellick Belshaw.   For those of you who don't know who Evelyn Underhill is, she was prolific writer on the topics of mysticism, spiritual thought and practice, and worship; and a practicing spiritual director of the early 20th century.  Her early major work,  Mysticism (1911) remains the basic text on the topic; but her writings are numerous.  The Lenten devotional has been created from the whole corpus of her work. I can remember reading her book Mysticism during my undergraduate work in Medieval studies:  I too, shared her interest…
Read More

Living in baptism

I am a very, very fortunate person.  Through some twist of fate, it seems that a trip to the beach has, for the last few years, fallen on the week of my birthday.  So this year, again, I had the chance to celebrate the anniversary of my arrival on this little planet from a beach in Mexico. But this year was not by any imagination business as usual on our few days in the sun. This year, instead of sitting comfortably on my beach palapa bed  in the shade and watching the fun in the waves, I decided make a change.  I actually got in the water. Well, it wasn't really a decision -- not like deciding which book to…
Read More

Blessed are…

A week ago, I was supposed to fill in for Pastor Amy and lead the discussion in our Wednesday Night Words Bible Study while she was out of town, but 2011's wacky weird weather had other ideas -- that turned out to be the day of  the-wettest-ever-snowfall and the commute-beyond-all-description for so many people (remember the pictures of 100's of abandoned cars on the GW Parkway?).  It turned out to be a very good thing that we cancelled our get-together.  So I did the next best thing and distributed my outline to the group...and promised to write a little bit about Matthew 5:4, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they…
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

Viva la Resistance…

No, I have not been mysteriously transported to the French Resistance and the fight against Nazi Germany, although, internally it might feel a bit like that.  And maybe “Long live the Resistance” is not really the sentiment that I want to express, because, really, I would like it to end – it just seems to be the reality of the past few weeks, and, particularly the last 48 hours. Resistance – you know, that gift from God that shines a light on something that needs our holy attention?  When you are in the middle of it, it certainly does not feel like a gift. There are lots of changes all around…
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

Star-shaped pegs, round holes, and obsessions…

The Lenten season is never a particularly easy one for me...I tend to take the set-apart nature of this time very seriously, and conduct my own very intense version of the 12-step "ruthless moral inventory" to the very maximum.  Throw in a little of the type of soul-searching and relationship review that precedes the commemoration of Yom Kippur, and add a dash of my own personal intensity, and well, you can imagine what these weeks are like inside my spirit and my head.  I have always loved the Lenten season, despite its difficulties -- but not this year. Without burdening those of you who kindly read what I write with…
Read More

Tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright…

Let me repeat that statement one more time:  tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright. This sentence danced through my brain recently while I was doing my daily trudge on the elliptical trainer (you know, the 40 minute walk that goes no where fast?).   It is the summary that occurs to me after a lengthy discussion I was having with a friend, in response to his exclamation following my excitement about a Lenten study group at my church at the Stations of the Cross: "I don't know why Protestants are always trying to be so Catholic!"  I know a lot of people raised as Catholic, but now practicing Protestant. I…
Read More

Authority, credentials, and the road less travelled…

Well, the Lenten season is, for me, off to a whizz-bang start.  Two Ash Wednesday services, five days of my personal spiritual discipline, a conversation with my spiritual director and one with my pastor (and let's not forget the total change in my relationship to all the water on the planet) and yes, my view of the world and my place in it is totally up-ended. I have a new, weird kind of clarity, and I realize that, when faced with that famous fork in the road, I have been looking right when I should have been looking left-- although not totally.  It has been more like I've been looking right,…
Read More

Public vs. private, again…

As the basis of my personal Lenten practice, I am using a book called Lent with Evelyn Underhill, edited by G. P. Mellick Belshaw.   For those of you who don't know who Evelyn Underhill is, she was prolific writer on the topics of mysticism, spiritual thought and practice, and worship; and a practicing spiritual director of the early 20th century.  Her early major work,  Mysticism (1911) remains the basic text on the topic; but her writings are numerous.  The Lenten devotional has been created from the whole corpus of her work. I can remember reading her book Mysticism during my undergraduate work in Medieval studies:  I too, shared her interest…
Read More

Living in baptism

I am a very, very fortunate person.  Through some twist of fate, it seems that a trip to the beach has, for the last few years, fallen on the week of my birthday.  So this year, again, I had the chance to celebrate the anniversary of my arrival on this little planet from a beach in Mexico. But this year was not by any imagination business as usual on our few days in the sun. This year, instead of sitting comfortably on my beach palapa bed  in the shade and watching the fun in the waves, I decided make a change.  I actually got in the water. Well, it wasn't really a decision -- not like deciding which book to…
Read More

Blessed are…

A week ago, I was supposed to fill in for Pastor Amy and lead the discussion in our Wednesday Night Words Bible Study while she was out of town, but 2011's wacky weird weather had other ideas -- that turned out to be the day of  the-wettest-ever-snowfall and the commute-beyond-all-description for so many people (remember the pictures of 100's of abandoned cars on the GW Parkway?).  It turned out to be a very good thing that we cancelled our get-together.  So I did the next best thing and distributed my outline to the group...and promised to write a little bit about Matthew 5:4, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they…
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

Viva la Resistance…

No, I have not been mysteriously transported to the French Resistance and the fight against Nazi Germany, although, internally it might feel a bit like that.  And maybe “Long live the Resistance” is not really the sentiment that I want to express, because, really, I would like it to end – it just seems to be the reality of the past few weeks, and, particularly the last 48 hours. Resistance – you know, that gift from God that shines a light on something that needs our holy attention?  When you are in the middle of it, it certainly does not feel like a gift. There are lots of changes all around…
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

Star-shaped pegs, round holes, and obsessions…

The Lenten season is never a particularly easy one for me...I tend to take the set-apart nature of this time very seriously, and conduct my own very intense version of the 12-step "ruthless moral inventory" to the very maximum.  Throw in a little of the type of soul-searching and relationship review that precedes the commemoration of Yom Kippur, and add a dash of my own personal intensity, and well, you can imagine what these weeks are like inside my spirit and my head.  I have always loved the Lenten season, despite its difficulties -- but not this year. Without burdening those of you who kindly read what I write with…
Read More

Tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright…

Let me repeat that statement one more time:  tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright. This sentence danced through my brain recently while I was doing my daily trudge on the elliptical trainer (you know, the 40 minute walk that goes no where fast?).   It is the summary that occurs to me after a lengthy discussion I was having with a friend, in response to his exclamation following my excitement about a Lenten study group at my church at the Stations of the Cross: "I don't know why Protestants are always trying to be so Catholic!"  I know a lot of people raised as Catholic, but now practicing Protestant. I…
Read More

Authority, credentials, and the road less travelled…

Well, the Lenten season is, for me, off to a whizz-bang start.  Two Ash Wednesday services, five days of my personal spiritual discipline, a conversation with my spiritual director and one with my pastor (and let's not forget the total change in my relationship to all the water on the planet) and yes, my view of the world and my place in it is totally up-ended. I have a new, weird kind of clarity, and I realize that, when faced with that famous fork in the road, I have been looking right when I should have been looking left-- although not totally.  It has been more like I've been looking right,…
Read More

Public vs. private, again…

As the basis of my personal Lenten practice, I am using a book called Lent with Evelyn Underhill, edited by G. P. Mellick Belshaw.   For those of you who don't know who Evelyn Underhill is, she was prolific writer on the topics of mysticism, spiritual thought and practice, and worship; and a practicing spiritual director of the early 20th century.  Her early major work,  Mysticism (1911) remains the basic text on the topic; but her writings are numerous.  The Lenten devotional has been created from the whole corpus of her work. I can remember reading her book Mysticism during my undergraduate work in Medieval studies:  I too, shared her interest…
Read More

Living in baptism

I am a very, very fortunate person.  Through some twist of fate, it seems that a trip to the beach has, for the last few years, fallen on the week of my birthday.  So this year, again, I had the chance to celebrate the anniversary of my arrival on this little planet from a beach in Mexico. But this year was not by any imagination business as usual on our few days in the sun. This year, instead of sitting comfortably on my beach palapa bed  in the shade and watching the fun in the waves, I decided make a change.  I actually got in the water. Well, it wasn't really a decision -- not like deciding which book to…
Read More

Blessed are…

A week ago, I was supposed to fill in for Pastor Amy and lead the discussion in our Wednesday Night Words Bible Study while she was out of town, but 2011's wacky weird weather had other ideas -- that turned out to be the day of  the-wettest-ever-snowfall and the commute-beyond-all-description for so many people (remember the pictures of 100's of abandoned cars on the GW Parkway?).  It turned out to be a very good thing that we cancelled our get-together.  So I did the next best thing and distributed my outline to the group...and promised to write a little bit about Matthew 5:4, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they…
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

Viva la Resistance…

No, I have not been mysteriously transported to the French Resistance and the fight against Nazi Germany, although, internally it might feel a bit like that.  And maybe “Long live the Resistance” is not really the sentiment that I want to express, because, really, I would like it to end – it just seems to be the reality of the past few weeks, and, particularly the last 48 hours. Resistance – you know, that gift from God that shines a light on something that needs our holy attention?  When you are in the middle of it, it certainly does not feel like a gift. There are lots of changes all around…
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

Star-shaped pegs, round holes, and obsessions…

The Lenten season is never a particularly easy one for me...I tend to take the set-apart nature of this time very seriously, and conduct my own very intense version of the 12-step "ruthless moral inventory" to the very maximum.  Throw in a little of the type of soul-searching and relationship review that precedes the commemoration of Yom Kippur, and add a dash of my own personal intensity, and well, you can imagine what these weeks are like inside my spirit and my head.  I have always loved the Lenten season, despite its difficulties -- but not this year. Without burdening those of you who kindly read what I write with…
Read More

Tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright…

Let me repeat that statement one more time:  tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright. This sentence danced through my brain recently while I was doing my daily trudge on the elliptical trainer (you know, the 40 minute walk that goes no where fast?).   It is the summary that occurs to me after a lengthy discussion I was having with a friend, in response to his exclamation following my excitement about a Lenten study group at my church at the Stations of the Cross: "I don't know why Protestants are always trying to be so Catholic!"  I know a lot of people raised as Catholic, but now practicing Protestant. I…
Read More

Authority, credentials, and the road less travelled…

Well, the Lenten season is, for me, off to a whizz-bang start.  Two Ash Wednesday services, five days of my personal spiritual discipline, a conversation with my spiritual director and one with my pastor (and let's not forget the total change in my relationship to all the water on the planet) and yes, my view of the world and my place in it is totally up-ended. I have a new, weird kind of clarity, and I realize that, when faced with that famous fork in the road, I have been looking right when I should have been looking left-- although not totally.  It has been more like I've been looking right,…
Read More

Public vs. private, again…

As the basis of my personal Lenten practice, I am using a book called Lent with Evelyn Underhill, edited by G. P. Mellick Belshaw.   For those of you who don't know who Evelyn Underhill is, she was prolific writer on the topics of mysticism, spiritual thought and practice, and worship; and a practicing spiritual director of the early 20th century.  Her early major work,  Mysticism (1911) remains the basic text on the topic; but her writings are numerous.  The Lenten devotional has been created from the whole corpus of her work. I can remember reading her book Mysticism during my undergraduate work in Medieval studies:  I too, shared her interest…
Read More

Living in baptism

I am a very, very fortunate person.  Through some twist of fate, it seems that a trip to the beach has, for the last few years, fallen on the week of my birthday.  So this year, again, I had the chance to celebrate the anniversary of my arrival on this little planet from a beach in Mexico. But this year was not by any imagination business as usual on our few days in the sun. This year, instead of sitting comfortably on my beach palapa bed  in the shade and watching the fun in the waves, I decided make a change.  I actually got in the water. Well, it wasn't really a decision -- not like deciding which book to…
Read More

Blessed are…

A week ago, I was supposed to fill in for Pastor Amy and lead the discussion in our Wednesday Night Words Bible Study while she was out of town, but 2011's wacky weird weather had other ideas -- that turned out to be the day of  the-wettest-ever-snowfall and the commute-beyond-all-description for so many people (remember the pictures of 100's of abandoned cars on the GW Parkway?).  It turned out to be a very good thing that we cancelled our get-together.  So I did the next best thing and distributed my outline to the group...and promised to write a little bit about Matthew 5:4, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they…
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

Viva la Resistance…

No, I have not been mysteriously transported to the French Resistance and the fight against Nazi Germany, although, internally it might feel a bit like that.  And maybe “Long live the Resistance” is not really the sentiment that I want to express, because, really, I would like it to end – it just seems to be the reality of the past few weeks, and, particularly the last 48 hours. Resistance – you know, that gift from God that shines a light on something that needs our holy attention?  When you are in the middle of it, it certainly does not feel like a gift. There are lots of changes all around…
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

Star-shaped pegs, round holes, and obsessions…

The Lenten season is never a particularly easy one for me...I tend to take the set-apart nature of this time very seriously, and conduct my own very intense version of the 12-step "ruthless moral inventory" to the very maximum.  Throw in a little of the type of soul-searching and relationship review that precedes the commemoration of Yom Kippur, and add a dash of my own personal intensity, and well, you can imagine what these weeks are like inside my spirit and my head.  I have always loved the Lenten season, despite its difficulties -- but not this year. Without burdening those of you who kindly read what I write with…
Read More

Tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright…

Let me repeat that statement one more time:  tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright. This sentence danced through my brain recently while I was doing my daily trudge on the elliptical trainer (you know, the 40 minute walk that goes no where fast?).   It is the summary that occurs to me after a lengthy discussion I was having with a friend, in response to his exclamation following my excitement about a Lenten study group at my church at the Stations of the Cross: "I don't know why Protestants are always trying to be so Catholic!"  I know a lot of people raised as Catholic, but now practicing Protestant. I…
Read More

Authority, credentials, and the road less travelled…

Well, the Lenten season is, for me, off to a whizz-bang start.  Two Ash Wednesday services, five days of my personal spiritual discipline, a conversation with my spiritual director and one with my pastor (and let's not forget the total change in my relationship to all the water on the planet) and yes, my view of the world and my place in it is totally up-ended. I have a new, weird kind of clarity, and I realize that, when faced with that famous fork in the road, I have been looking right when I should have been looking left-- although not totally.  It has been more like I've been looking right,…
Read More

Public vs. private, again…

As the basis of my personal Lenten practice, I am using a book called Lent with Evelyn Underhill, edited by G. P. Mellick Belshaw.   For those of you who don't know who Evelyn Underhill is, she was prolific writer on the topics of mysticism, spiritual thought and practice, and worship; and a practicing spiritual director of the early 20th century.  Her early major work,  Mysticism (1911) remains the basic text on the topic; but her writings are numerous.  The Lenten devotional has been created from the whole corpus of her work. I can remember reading her book Mysticism during my undergraduate work in Medieval studies:  I too, shared her interest…
Read More

Living in baptism

I am a very, very fortunate person.  Through some twist of fate, it seems that a trip to the beach has, for the last few years, fallen on the week of my birthday.  So this year, again, I had the chance to celebrate the anniversary of my arrival on this little planet from a beach in Mexico. But this year was not by any imagination business as usual on our few days in the sun. This year, instead of sitting comfortably on my beach palapa bed  in the shade and watching the fun in the waves, I decided make a change.  I actually got in the water. Well, it wasn't really a decision -- not like deciding which book to…
Read More

Blessed are…

A week ago, I was supposed to fill in for Pastor Amy and lead the discussion in our Wednesday Night Words Bible Study while she was out of town, but 2011's wacky weird weather had other ideas -- that turned out to be the day of  the-wettest-ever-snowfall and the commute-beyond-all-description for so many people (remember the pictures of 100's of abandoned cars on the GW Parkway?).  It turned out to be a very good thing that we cancelled our get-together.  So I did the next best thing and distributed my outline to the group...and promised to write a little bit about Matthew 5:4, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they…
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

Viva la Resistance…

No, I have not been mysteriously transported to the French Resistance and the fight against Nazi Germany, although, internally it might feel a bit like that.  And maybe “Long live the Resistance” is not really the sentiment that I want to express, because, really, I would like it to end – it just seems to be the reality of the past few weeks, and, particularly the last 48 hours. Resistance – you know, that gift from God that shines a light on something that needs our holy attention?  When you are in the middle of it, it certainly does not feel like a gift. There are lots of changes all around…
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

Star-shaped pegs, round holes, and obsessions…

The Lenten season is never a particularly easy one for me...I tend to take the set-apart nature of this time very seriously, and conduct my own very intense version of the 12-step "ruthless moral inventory" to the very maximum.  Throw in a little of the type of soul-searching and relationship review that precedes the commemoration of Yom Kippur, and add a dash of my own personal intensity, and well, you can imagine what these weeks are like inside my spirit and my head.  I have always loved the Lenten season, despite its difficulties -- but not this year. Without burdening those of you who kindly read what I write with…
Read More

Tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright…

Let me repeat that statement one more time:  tradition anchors us, but change is our birthright. This sentence danced through my brain recently while I was doing my daily trudge on the elliptical trainer (you know, the 40 minute walk that goes no where fast?).   It is the summary that occurs to me after a lengthy discussion I was having with a friend, in response to his exclamation following my excitement about a Lenten study group at my church at the Stations of the Cross: "I don't know why Protestants are always trying to be so Catholic!"  I know a lot of people raised as Catholic, but now practicing Protestant. I…
Read More

Authority, credentials, and the road less travelled…

Well, the Lenten season is, for me, off to a whizz-bang start.  Two Ash Wednesday services, five days of my personal spiritual discipline, a conversation with my spiritual director and one with my pastor (and let's not forget the total change in my relationship to all the water on the planet) and yes, my view of the world and my place in it is totally up-ended. I have a new, weird kind of clarity, and I realize that, when faced with that famous fork in the road, I have been looking right when I should have been looking left-- although not totally.  It has been more like I've been looking right,…
Read More

Public vs. private, again…

As the basis of my personal Lenten practice, I am using a book called Lent with Evelyn Underhill, edited by G. P. Mellick Belshaw.   For those of you who don't know who Evelyn Underhill is, she was prolific writer on the topics of mysticism, spiritual thought and practice, and worship; and a practicing spiritual director of the early 20th century.  Her early major work,  Mysticism (1911) remains the basic text on the topic; but her writings are numerous.  The Lenten devotional has been created from the whole corpus of her work. I can remember reading her book Mysticism during my undergraduate work in Medieval studies:  I too, shared her interest…
Read More

Living in baptism

I am a very, very fortunate person.  Through some twist of fate, it seems that a trip to the beach has, for the last few years, fallen on the week of my birthday.  So this year, again, I had the chance to celebrate the anniversary of my arrival on this little planet from a beach in Mexico. But this year was not by any imagination business as usual on our few days in the sun. This year, instead of sitting comfortably on my beach palapa bed  in the shade and watching the fun in the waves, I decided make a change.  I actually got in the water. Well, it wasn't really a decision -- not like deciding which book to…
Read More

Blessed are…

A week ago, I was supposed to fill in for Pastor Amy and lead the discussion in our Wednesday Night Words Bible Study while she was out of town, but 2011's wacky weird weather had other ideas -- that turned out to be the day of  the-wettest-ever-snowfall and the commute-beyond-all-description for so many people (remember the pictures of 100's of abandoned cars on the GW Parkway?).  It turned out to be a very good thing that we cancelled our get-together.  So I did the next best thing and distributed my outline to the group...and promised to write a little bit about Matthew 5:4, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they…
Read More