Tomorrow Pentecost begins. The birthday of the church! At my church we’ll wear red and celebrate the coming of the Spirit with wind and fire and bells. But right now it is the last day of Eastertide. On Good Friday, April 2, our family and some friends spent a good portion of the day putting in a quarter acre garden. The Great Flood of Nashville hit a month later May 1-3. We suffered very little damage to personal property. With the exception of the garden. It was under eight-to-ten feet of water for most of two days. And it was pretty well destroyed.
Read MoreEaster XIII
Healing Part III: Honest Music
Iโve found myself in the past couple of years in search of music that speaks to life. Really speaks to life.
So much popular music is mainly the girl meets boy (or boy meets girl) variety of sentimental or sensual romance. Iโm not totally against this. It just has limits. Iโm looking for the kind of lyrics and musical composition that goes deeper than feelings and hormones.
Easter XII
BIG Apple Here are some pics with highlights from my first trip to New York City. I’ve passed through by the NYC airports and even on a youth group bus, but this was the first time I’ve been for a…
Read MoreEaster XI
Healing
Part II: Trees
One of this Sundayโs passages is Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21.
As one commentator summarized it: โThe conclusion of Revelation has seemed to many interpreters to be a bit choppy, a barely-held-together conglomeration of leftover pieces, stumbling toward the close of the book.โ Iโll say.
Earlier this week I heard a sermon which dealt with the morass of endings by focusing on one image from the text: the tree of life. Just that phrase took me like a hyperlink to one of the most healing images of my own life time . . . . the tree of life.
Read MoreEaster X
I’ve wanted to start a series on healing for several weeks now. But every time I get plans underway it seems something new crops up that needs healing . . . like discovering how many files are really unrecoverable from my defunct hard drive, or seeing our drowned garden, or finding myself living in a city experiencing its worst devastation since the Civil War.
Read MoreEaster IX
This week’s floods in Nashville, Tennessee have been overwhelming to many and devastating to others. So much has been lost . . . lives, homes, livelihoods. In comparison to the magnitude of losses that others have felt, my family has mostly been inconvenienced. Still I am struck by the sheer force of it all. Water has such incredible power for both good and tragedy. Reading this week’s lectionary texts, water is at every turn. You’ll hear echoes of those scriptures in this short poem . . .
Read MoreEaster VIII
Bye Bye “Bye Bye” said the sweet blonde boy. He waved each time. “Bye Bye” he said more insistently. As we stood in line to board the airplane for a second time this morning, the friendly little guy wanted everyone…
Read MoreEaster VII
A Decade of practice: This year feels like a series of milestones in a way. Why do we think that 10 years makes a difference? Why not nine years? or 12 and 1/2? Nonetheless. It was during the last few months of 1999 when my full-time work in and for a congregation came to an end. And a new vocation, or really a revised longer-term vocation, began to take shape. I started graduate school in the fall of 2000 and began learning the practices of becoming a scholar. This is scholarship that I understand to be for the sake of the church.
Read MoreEaster VI
It has been 16 years since Costly Obedience was published by Judson Press. It was the first published collection of sermons by Southern Baptist women. Now comes a long overdue next incarnation of sermons by Baptist women across a much wider swath of Baptist life. It is important for lots of reasons. It includes sermons by more than 30 women on a wide variety of topics and texts. It lifts voices and delivers messages that need to be heard beyond the local congregations and events where they were first offered.
Read MoreEaster V
Almanac: Tonight a half moon is shining (or more technically, the first quarter). We’ve had no rain to speak of in the last week. Less than three weeks since we planted the farm . . . On Good Friday we put in beans, yellow squash, onions, corn, turnips, cucumbers, zucchini, butternut squash, watermelon, potatoes, garlic, and more squash.
Read MoreEaster IV
Today my family and I gathered with most of our in-laws and outlaws and had an Easter egg hunt. And enough food to feed a small church. About 500 eggs, give or take, were hidden. And most were found. Well, my father-in-law came up with 22 strays. The mower will no doubt turn up more. But kids ran around the lawn with abandon scooping them up.
Read MoreEaster III
One of the best gifts we can give to people is to ask them “How did God’s presence get you through that tough spot in your life?” This was the advice of sociologist and self-described “immigrant in practical theology” Nancy Ammerman. Nancy gave the opening key note address at the Association for Practical Theology last Friday evening.
Read MoreEaster I
Under the Stars: Since the weather turned warm in the last couple of weeks, I’ve found myself especially glad to be out under the stars in the evening. The trees in my yard are still cooperating with my desire for a view to the heights. Soon they will block a large piece of the sky above our little patch of earth.
Read MoreHoly Week II
Silence
is the word
for this day
between
Good Friday
and
Easter Sunday
And so I will keep it.
Holy Week I
Holy Week. As I removed my shoes tonight and pressed my feet to the cold tiles in the sanctuary I was taken back. . . . In my final year of seminary I preached to my peers and friends at Southern Seminary. It was the first (and I suppose the only) time I preached in my seminary community (outside of preaching class anyway). It was Maundy Thursday in 1993. It was something of a renegade service.
Read MoreLent XI
Switchfoot. Standing here on the brink of Holy Week, I’m glad to be headed in to hear the music of Switchfoot in a live concert in Cincinnati, Ohio at The Underground. Since early November when Switchfoot released their newest album, Hello Hurricane, I’ve been playing it almost daily.
Read MoreLent IX
Spring in Minnesota. I just came in from wrapping up the fifth round of interviews with seminarians who are completing their formal education and moving toward ministry. We held the interview at the Collegeville Institute adjacent to the campus of St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN.
Read MoreLent VIII
Sunshine and Rain: I’ve been out walking in sunshine this late afternoon. And just breathing it all in. This week’s Hebrew Bible text from Isaiah reminded me of a short meditation I wrote five years ago after the “hundred year rain” fell in Death Valley and Joshua Tree, California. Today’s temperatures in the Twin Cities and the blue skies also reminded me of that amazing trip we took during Holy Week 2005.
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