Morning Prayers

I like starting my day in peace and quiet. Maybe it matters so much to me because I have so little expectation of the day continuing that way. I have learned that if I start my day in chaos, that is how the day is going to likely going to unfold (or, more accurately, unravel). [...]

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Romans 8:26 and the Jesus Prayer

During some of the most difficult moments in my life, I have found help in the words written by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans. “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for [...]

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Pascal’s Prayer

With perfect consistency of mind, help me to receive all manner of events. For we know not what to ask, and we cannot ask for one event rather than another without presumption. We cannot desire a specific action without presuming to be a judge, and assuming responsibility for what in Your wisdom You may hide [...]

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Confessions of a Middle-Class Snob

The New Year got off to a pretty slow start at our house this year. I made a pot of coffee and turned on the Rose Bowl Parade, one of my favorite annual traditions, and just relaxed. I watched the parade on HGTV because they provide commercial-free coverage and, come on…who likes commercials? After the [...]

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Nothing less…but so much more

Do you ever find yourself knowing what it is you want to say, but struggling to find words to clearly convey your thoughts? It happens to me all the time. But recently, certain ideas which had been stirring around my head in a muddle, suddenly crystallized with clarity into a single sentence. Anyone who knows [...]

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What’s Next?

Given the diversity and polarization of our culture, we frequently find people hold starkly differing perspectives. So different, in fact, that they sometimes seem more like alternate perceptions of reality rather than just different opinions. In this current political season, evidence of this divide between people is painfully obvious. But politics is not the only [...]

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A Return to Blogging

Due to popular demand, I have returned to blogging.  Oh, all right…despite the lack of any real popular demand, I have returned to blogging after a substantial period of absence. There are a lot of reasons for my absence, not the least of which was a perceived need on my part to stop talking for a [...]

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The Trail to the Left

Today I went on a hike in my beloved Superstition Mountains. It was a good hike. It was good in the same way that they say any airplane landing you can walk away from is a good landing. In other words, I survived this hike but it was, by all other objective standards, a failure. [...]

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A Worthwhile (but potentially troubling) Read

There are a few blogs I check out from time to time. One is InternetMonk.com. Like me, the writer Michael Spencer, has an extensive background in the institutional church, and his continuing connection to it is as ambivalent as my own. I am attaching a link to one of his recent posts that is a “squirmer”. [...]

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