I wanted to wish you a merry Christmas and happy holidays, and a 2026 filled with growth and healing even in the midst of what may sometimes be a mess. I also wanted to thank you for reading my thoughts and so often responding. I cherish our conversations. My hopes for us in 2026 are simple but not easy: A closer growing friendship with God. A dynamic, adventurous spiritual life. Faith that…

Courage defies easy definition and easy depiction. We rely on dramatic stories of bravery under fire or unimaginable sacrifice to tell us what true courage is. Courage, it is said, is being afraid and busting into the burning building to rescue the baby anyway. And this is true. But looking to the big and audacious for what courage looks like may leave us believing we lack courage.  While the…

The truth is that any given day serves a morsel of mourning along with a helping of thankfulness. In life, to taste only one is impossible–or delusion. So it is that of the hundreds of funerals I’ve had the sad, sacred honor of presiding over, the 23rd Psalm has most often been the core text. It poetically speaks the hope of deliverance in the darkness, not deliverance from the dark. A table set…

This day in history, circa 1964.  My two older sisters, Diane and Tina, dressed me in a “really cute” Blue Bonnet Girl costume for Halloween. I don’t recall having a choice in this. I was eight. I also don’t remember which one of them wore the costume before. Someone, my mom maybe, had meticulously hand-sewn the dress and bonnet. It was royal blue with white lace trim. They combed my dark hair…

Editor’s note: This is a prose poem, unlike my typical Sunday psalm. But it is still a prayer, though maybe harder to pray. I wrote it in response to how often I’ve heard this phrase uttered in the time of recent horrific events. It wasn’t meant to be this way. A brother’s blood fertilizing virgin soil, dark fingers of tangled weeds choking promise, wrapping death-tight vines round our necks. It…

The old man slid his pack off his shoulders, and the sudden weightlessness nearly toppled him. He forced his tight mouth into a twisted smile, relishing the lightness that came as much from being surrounded once again by a wilderness he had somehow come to believe was home as from dropping his pack. The old man leaned his 30.06 against an aspen tree. He leaned there too. Loam, the smell of death…

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:   Thank you for filling the world with glimpses of your goodness and grace. Your creation shouts your name. Even fatherhood reflects your glory. In your word you tell us to rejoice with those who rejoice. Today we rejoice in your gift of fathers. We are grateful that they have taught us everything from silly jokes to how to worship you, our heavenly Father.  They…

On the cross, Jesus prays the first part of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It’s the first stanza of a prophetic “trouble and trust” psalm. Trouble and trust, meaning the psalmist laments in the first half, and lists God’s faithfulness in the second half. Verse 19 begins the expressions of trust. In verse 24, he affirms trust: “he [God] has not hidden his face from him but…

HE IS RISEN! He is risen indeed. These are the beautiful, true words I’ve led congregations to affirm for over forty years. They are words that contain the story of my life of change. I would not be who I am without the truth that Jesus resurrected. These words are a holy liturgy. But the liturgy of Holy Week sometimes grows opaque, difficult to discern Jesus and the people he encountered…

Today’s Sunday Psalm was inspired by Mary’s anointing of Jesus at Bethany in Mark 14:1-9, Matthew 26:6-13, John 12:1-8, and possibly Luke 7:36-50. My Lenten practice as I write here has been to do beautiful things toJesus. The prayer is a reflection of that. I am pouring my heart and mind out directly and personally to Jesus. May it help you too, as Easter nears, to do a beautiful thing to…

Once upon a time, a woman named Mary interrupted a dinner party Jesus attended by breaking a vial of expensive perfume and pouring it on his feet (and possibly his head too). Just as would happen with one of our modern dinner parties, Mary’s anointing of Jesus caused spiritual indigestion. They cloaked their confusion and discomfort with feigned indignation. “What a waste. We should have sold…

On Christmas Eve, churches and families innumerable will light a symbolic candle called the Christ Candle. We light it to remember and symbolize what Jesus said of himself. In John 8:12 “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”  This Christmas Eve Psalm is a prayer calling for God to unite us in his light and to overwhelm the…