One is the loneliest number there will ever be. And lonely is “the saddest experience you’ll ever know.” Thus says Three Dog Night. We desperately need to touch and be touched, hear and be heard, know and be known, listen and talk about everything, live in a safe place. But the worldly weak church, the “our” world, barely squeezes into …

In 1924 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, then 18 years old, determines to become a theologian, seeking to study theology at the University of Berlin. In 1931 the young theologian experienced what he  called “a great liberation.” This liberation pulled him into the church. He spoke of rediscovering scripture, prayer and discipleship. He referred to his new way of reading   scripture as becoming …

In this most uncivil and harsh time of wall building and public name calling I am looking for witnesses of love, civility and justice; People who never return evil for evil, build bridges and never trash anyone who disagrees with them. Within my lifetime the name that most quickly comes to mind is Martin Luther King. In 1963, during his …

My heart is cluttered with desiring-the chaos of it is almost more than I can endure at times. Sometimes I lose any sense of a meaningful story being lived out in my life. Life becomes a series of snapshots at which time I “felt good” or I “ felt bad.” The pain of misdirected longings leads me to often long …

Prayer And Politics-The Martyrdom Of Polycarp The spirituality and politics of Christ’s disciples has always been inseparable from Jesus the Lord and His Spirit. At the time of Christ and the early church the word religiare from which we get the word religion meant in the Roman empire that there was a religious bond between a nation’s citizens and their …

On May 19, 1838 at 10:30 a.m. a worldly university student, age 25, whose life had been plagued by a family curse, a culture of death, an abusive and condemning Christian father and the unremitting intellectual powers of his own dark genius, recorded the following experience: “There is such a thing as indescribable joy which glows through us as unaccountably …

For most of us Christmas began with magic, the magic of Santa Claus. We cannot remember when we began believing in Santa, at least I cannot. I knew that Santa was treasured and reinforced by everybody I trusted. So I was devastated when celebrating my sixth Christmas to discover that Santa Claus was not Santa, he was in fact my …

An observer comes into the lunchroom of a campus noted for it’s stand against racism and observes the races clustered in racially segregated groups around the lunchroom. The visitor says “Can we not do better than this?” The answer comes back, “All of the students insist on their constitutional right to eat in a “safe space.” And so it is …

I am writing this post to apologize to any of you that I might have hurt when I blogged regarding the election Saturday morning. I am technologically challenged. And should have known this would go viral. But I ignorantly did not. So I am very sorry that I hurt any of you. You are precious.   The second thing I …

Within the Church communication and conflicting about anything thought important is very difficult. But I recently experienced in the middle of this conflictual moment something originating in another world. Saturday of last week I had a long two hour conversation with a very lovely disciple of Jesus who disagrees with me about the political world but who desperately wants to …