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I well remember that bleached out pink plastic cup, a survivor of more wash-tub ablutions than it was ever designed for, filled with a warm cloudy liquid. I could smell the cloying sweetness wafting upward from the rim, and I think I may also have seen a few spongy white spheres suspended in the fluid. … Read the rest
Continue reading "Cup of Death and Life" »
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No. No more of this.
Lately I’ve been finding myself in a something like a state of chronic lament. Waking up, as I do, to a news feed filled with very public cases of domestic abuse and #metoo harassment , cruel deportations that divide families… and now yet another massacre of school children. I fear … Read the rest
Continue reading "The Lent of Our Discontent" »Listen to Audio
Someone in this house has just recovered from a fever, has been lifted up, and is serving God. I don’t necessarily know who it is. Although… you may. The person recovered from the fever may even be you.
I know that it has been me. Lord knows I’ve had some debilitating fevers in my life: … Read the rest
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So it’s a week to be an Oregonian, no? I have to love it when our gas-pumping habits make the national news. On Thursday I woke up to the Washington Post headline that read “I don’t even know HOW: Some Oregonians panic about the new self-service gas law.”
Great. The rest of the country already … Read the rest
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This morning’s lessons contain something like a sacred inventory of body parts: Feet. Arms. Hands. Flesh. In … Read the rest
Continue reading "The Word is Good" »Listen to Audio
Nothing will be impossible with God. This is what the angel Gabriel told the young Mary, echoing the message of 2nd Samuel when the Lord told the prophet Nathan that God would make a great house from the line of the simple shepherd now become king David. And Paul reiterates it in his own … Read the rest
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Today being Christ the King Sunday, and myself never having lived under the authority of an earthly king, I thought I’d better do some research into how my peers think about kings. So I did what contemporary people do, and turned to the Oracle of Mountain View—that being Google—for insight.
I figured that … Read the rest
Continue reading "Jesus & Jonathan Haidt" »
Friends, how did you get in here? That’s a serious question. Did you walk, drive, take the train? Did you come through the south or north doors, or through the slype, that little vestibule over there? When you arrived, did someone greet you with kindness, hand you a bulletin, tell you where to take your children or show … Read the rest
“There’s no way out,” lamented a headline from Houston this week. Of all the horrifying and heartbreaking reportage from the flood zone, this one felt the most personal because just a week ago Saturday I was sitting in an eerily quiet airport terminal in Austin Texas, similarly wondering if there were a way out. Which of course there … Read the rest
Continue reading "It's All One Way" »Have any of you parents out there had the experience of your young children learning a classroom lesson on the environment and then becoming the household garbage police? I admit it, my children were the ones who insisted—leaving no room for negotiation—that I separate waste from recyclables.
I may not have been an early adopter, but of course … Read the rest
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