The Christian Calendar

“Rob, are you sailing with the winds of God today?” I was recently reminded of my mentor’s question years back. At the time, he shared that he was borrowing the question from his long-time pastor, Roger Frederickson; he called it “Roger’s question.” I can’t recall how I responded then, but I have not forgotten the […]

Read

Psalm 51, the Ash Wednesday psalm, is the acknowledged masterpiece of biblical self-knowledge. "I have been wicked from my birth, a sinner from my mother's womb." No human being has ever looked at himself more unflinchingly than the author of this incomparable penitential psalm. "I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me." [...]

Read

The grace and the impatience to wait In our secret yearnings we wait for your coming, and in our grinding despair we doubt that you will. And in this privileged place we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we and by those who despair more deeply than do we. Look upon your [...]

Read

  On Generosity On our own, we conclude: that there is not enough to go around we are going to run short of money of love of grades of publications of sex of beer of members of years of life we should seize the day seize the goods seize our neighbor’s goods because there is [...]

Read

  Gracious God, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, deliver me, I pray, from the easy habit of thinking that my spirituality is something between me and you alone. It is so difficult to accept the idea that my spiritual wholeness cannot be attained outside my life with others. Help [...]

Read

A few weeks back a friend texted me a link to a song that had been sustaining him amidst some major difficulties within his family. So I began to listen to it… then again and again and again. I am still listening to it. Meditating on it actually.  It has even entered the regular rotation […]

Read

One person has written that we never know enough about Jesus to know what he is going to do next. Jesus continues to show up in unimaginable ways amidst the most unlikely of circumstances.  On this Christmas Eve 2018—when certainly all is not well—let Madeleine L’Engle’s thoughtful words remind us of the reality of Jesus’ […]

Read