Midway in the journey of our lifeI came to myself in a dark wood,for the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard it is to tellthe nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh —the very thought of it renews my fear! It is so bitter death is hardly more so.But to set forth the […]
People often assume that theology is only for true believers: those who want to defend the existence of God against the skepticism of secular outsiders. But there’s an old open secret in the field: theologians often have a complicated relationship with belief, and some theologians are even non-believers. I’ve always been a secular—or non-religious—person. That’s […]
Freshly out of college, I began my adventure to Sonoma, California. I was on a quest to nurture my new infatuation with winemaking. After a formative year of studying food and wine in Europe, I signed up to be a seasonal cellar worker at a winery in Sonoma. A ripe twenty-two-year-old, my heart was fluttering […]
In October 2017, in the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting in US history, Bishop Ian Douglas of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut took part in a panel interview as a member of Bishops Against Gun Violence. There, Douglas spoke frankly of the troubling financial connections between the Episcopal Church in Connecticut and the arms […]
For everything the Bible says about money and possessions, its message can be ambivalent. As Walter Brueggemann puts it, “One can find in Scripture almost anything on the topic one wants to find,” and the Bible’s discussions of wealth and possessions are “complex and diverse in a way that refuses any systematic summary.”[1] On the […]
The theological case that the gospel makes a claim upon our money and our shared economic life has already been convincingly made, for anyone with ears to hear. From Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman to Cornel West and Delores Williams, Black theological voices in the United States have clearly shown the connection between anti-Black racism […]
Churches don’t close because they lose their vision (or fulfill it), and they don’t close when they get too small. Churches close their doors when they run out of money. Often the demise of a congregation is dressed up in other language, but the cold hard fact is that churches close when they run out […]
Have you witnessed the moment when a young mother first sees her newborn child? Mother is holding her infant to herself, gazing into their face in rapture, smiling a joyous, self-giving, surprise-filled, welcome. Recently I learned from a seasoned delivery room nurse that a French phrase, “en face,” names the first face-to-face encounter; medicine deems […]
I want to begin by thanking Esther Meek for her reflections on, as she describes it, the encounter of oneself with the other. In her sensitive essay, Meek describes the “primal encounter” between mother and infant that sets the foundation for relationships across the lifetime, including relationships with and to the “other,” and she makes […]
