Recently I was in Michigan for a conference, and I rented a car so that I could drive to my friends’ homes and stay with them instead of staying in a hotel. While I’m glad I made those arrangements, in the moment I realized that I had forgotten how fast Michiganders drive. Yikes. I was white-knuckling it in a “mid-size” (small) rental car in commuter … Continue reading
I was asked to record a spot on the local radio station on the day before the national election, but it will air several days later. So please bear with me in this tricky assignment.The atmosphere is charged with the anxiety of this year’s election, and you deserve to hear something that can help you address your concerns. I assume that if you are listening … Continue reading A Pre-Election Essay for Post-Election Anxiety
It happened so fast. We had no idea on Saturday morning that the water was blocking off roads. We had a family graveside to go to in Titonka, and we left with the clothes on our backs at 8:00 a.m. In Spencer, we get flood watches and warnings every spring, so we don’t pay much attention to them. Unless there is a drought—which we have … Continue reading Notes from a Soggy Small Town
He never said, “Be safe.”He saw what they did with the life-giving Law,its walls nowclosing in on soulsmeant to roam free. Perhaps his tears over the citywere not for all her wanderings,but for her fear,her lack of wonder,her contentment with the small,tame worldof scrupulous obedience.He shook her at her core,tumbled the Temple,untamed and tremblingwith wild rage.His love, uncaged,awakens us,invites us out to wildernesswhere questions lurk,beyond … Continue reading Into the Wild
The cousins got to play together once a year, when their parents met in Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. It was a long trek of a few days each way for Mary and Joseph’s family. Jesus was eager to meet up with John, so he had to be patient as helped his mother keep track of his younger siblings. The boys were different … Continue reading The Boys in the River
Christmas Eve 2021 Chances are he won’t recall the holiness and awe of candlelight, “O Holy Night,” the beauty of it all. Perhaps he will, but memory’s strange (my history is a haze); it snatches moments randomly, misplaces years and days. I won’t soon lose the image of his sweet, illumined face, his lips’ attempts to join the song of Love’s divine embrace. My heart … Continue reading One Christmas Eve
Advent 4: Annunciations She thought herself unnoticed, ordinary until the gaze of Joseph lit a flame of love and new awareness in her spirit, an inner warming when he said her name. And then a shocking, wondrous invitation, a privilege and burden never sought. The fiery figure offered explanation: her humble self was hearth divinely wrought. The darkness of our weary lives is broken, our … Continue reading
Advent 3: Annunciation to Joseph Steady, old boy. You can believe your eyes. Admit it. This is not unfamiliar, this mystic hope that shimmered in the shadows that day as the sawdust settled under your restless feet. You can believe what her ears heard, what she told you, how the messenger revealed the mystery’s shape hidden within her innate devotion. You can do this. The … Continue reading
Advent 2: ElizabethI couldn’t tell you when it went absent without leave but one day I noticed it was gone. The last shred of possibility slipped out the door. You adjust. The sadness becomes mortar for a wall just high enough to keep the dream from getting in finding its old place where it fit in so well until it didn’t. We resigned ourselves to … Continue reading
In Isaiah’s time they thought him crazed for saying things were gloomy when they weren’t. Their bellies full, their fortunes had been made and regularly sacrifices burnt to make a show of opening to God while turning a deaf ear to those whose cries were heard in heaven, many lacking food and suffering the cost of rich men’s lives. The prophet saw the thin veneer … Continue reading Advent 1: Isaiah
saint sinner seeker 