Choose Forgiveness
He sat on the end of the front row, choosing the spot, he informed me, so he would be out of the way. He had a heavy burden, a walker that was fully laden. My mind didn’t register him as…
Fall down six times, get up seven
Babies are remarkably resilient. Without our coaching they manage to learn to walk. They learn by falling. They fall again and again and again. And every time they fall, they get up and try again. Somewhere along the way, some…
Welcome to 2019. Begin at the end.
Happy New Year. 2019 feels so fresh, so full of possibility. Like new spiral notebooks on the first day of school—clean and open to creativity. You’d think with all our practice at New Year’s self-improvement, we’d be practically perfect by…
Brain Power
I sat listening to the Minnesota Orchestra. The soloist played Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto #1 in B flat minor. Wearing a dress covered in bright pink sequins, she played aggressively; as she moved, light bounced off her dress in an ugly…
Happy New Year
For those of you you are not liturgically minded, here's a little piece of trivia: the Christmas Season lasts from Christmas Eve through Epiphany which is January 6th. If you want to get super technical, through the Baptism of the…
Blessed and Blessing: the Stranger among us
In the very first book of the Bible, we discover something essential about hospitality. It’s not optional. When strangers pass by Abraham and Sarah’s dwelling, Abraham quickly provides provisions, food and drink, a place to wash and stay. In Abraham’s…
Contemplation and action: who is my neighbor?
Humor me. It’s an old story and you’ve heard it a thousand times. Jesus has just finished telling his followers “You must love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, all your strength and all your mind…
After horror, healing
On Friday after work, my wife and I shared a picnic in the early evening shade at the Arboretum, watching kids climbing on rocks near the waterfall. After living through what one newscaster called a “week of violence and sorrow,”…
The Road to Emmaus … and Back
Ever wonder why Jesus picked the disciples? They hardly seem like the cream of the crop. They spent a fair bit of Jesus’ ministry asking stupid questions and demonstrating petty jealousies. There were moments when they even demonstrated incompetence at…
