Not For Sale: An Interview with Kevin Austin
Kevin Austin is an important voice in the international effort to end modern-day slavery. As director of the abolitionist faith community within Not For Sale and an ordained missionary with the Free Methodist Church, Austin travels the world to create tools that engage business, government, and grassroots organizations in the service of enslaved and vulnerable communities. In this... Read More
Relocating the Body of Christ: Parish Collective and the Twenty-First Century Church
In the tenth chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews, the writer admonishes the church, saying, “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Heb. 10:24-25, NRSV). Simply meeting together, the author writes, is integral... Read More
On Monks, Desert Dwellers, and Lenten Asceticism: An Interview with Paula Huston
Paula Huston, a Camaldolese Benedictine oblate, is the author of numerous books, including Forgiveness and The Holy Way. In her new book Simplifying the Soul: Lenten Practices to Renew Your Spirit, Huston offers daily exercises that can help achieve simplicity of heart, soul, mind, and environment. In this interview, she discusses lessons contemporary Christians can learn from the... Read More
Suffering and the Love of God (A Tribute to My Wife)
A little over a year ago my wife was diagnosed with a rare, cancer-like disease called pseudomyxoma peritonei (PMP). This disease begins with an appendiceal or ovarian tumor that ruptures and begins to spread thick mucin throughout the abdominal cavity. The tumorous cells multiply, attaching themselves to organs and slowly filling the abdomen with a bright yellow Jell-O. If left... Read More
A Sense of Place: Flannery O’Connor and the Local Church
The whole south wall of my home seemed ready to collapse under a distressed drumming at the door one recent evening. While my wife went to the peephole I recollected some words from a sermon I’d heard years ago: “If our church catches on to the radical extent that Jesus calls us to love our neighbors, we’ll be the sort of community that has prostitutes banging down the doors.”... Read More
Removing the “Holy” from “the Holidays”
Christians have not always celebrated the Christmas holiday in this way—with canned music and decorations that begin long before the Thanksgiving turkey is stuffed and that end when the tree gets kicked to the curb on December 26. Christmas as we know it first began when our Christian ancestors in the Middle Ages took a perfectly good pagan observance of the winter solstice and... Read More
Measured Hope: A Meditation on the Third Week of Advent
A couple months ago, I ran across an article in the Atlantic that I thought was a sure fake (Chelsea Fagan, October 18, 2011). I read it once in disbelief; I read it a second time and thought, I must have stumbled across something from the Onion. The story just seemed too outlandish. It was an article on something called the “Paris Syndrome.” It explained that every year about... Read More
Do Not be Afraid: A Meditation on Matthew 1:18–25
“Tell me the story of when I was born.” This is a request that my adult son Evan invariably makes of me whenever we get together: “Tell me the story of when I was born,” he always says. And so I go through the whole story—the town and the house where we lived before his birth, the day or two leading up to that moment, and then the day of the birth. I tell him of the drive... Read More
The Introduction: A Meditation on Matthew 3:1–12
If you are old enough to remember Johnny Carson, you’ll remember that the late-night host’s show opened with an invariable liturgy: it always began with the announcement, “Welcome to the Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson,” followed by a listing of the night’s special guests and then an enthusiastic “Heeere’s Johnny,” always intoned by the avuncular Ed McMahon.... Read More
Pardon the Interruption: A Meditation on Luke 1:26-36
Inevitably, it always occurs at the most inconvenient time. You know what I mean. After a long, exhausting day at work, you sit down with a warm cup of tea to catch up on Gossip Girl, and that’s when it happens. “We interrupt your regularly scheduled program for this Special Emergency Alert!” You know right away that this is not going to be good news—after all, they would... Read More
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