Aha! Seeing Lent for what it was intended to be all along is a massive help: “Lent is a time of preparation for the coming of Easter. Sundays in Lent are not counted in the forty days because each Sunday represents a ‘mini-Easter’ and the reverent spirit of Lent is tempered with joyful anticipation of…

Our big leather book, a/k/a The Bible, has Jesus telling us in Matthew 6 to practice our piety in secret. But we started Lent almost two weeks ago on Ash Wednesday by parading around with giant crosses temporarily tattooed onto our foreheads. Sounds contradictory. “I experience this liturgical season (of Lent) as a theological riddle…

I sometimes wish we knew what’s been left out of the Bible, or what’s between the lines. For example, when this question was asked — He went into a cave and spent the night. And the word of the LORD came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” — 1st Kings 19:9 — was…

“Lent makes me uncomfortable,” admits Mary Lou Redding in Disciplines 2018, page 70. I thank her for saying that.   When I was a kid, Lent was something done by those other people in that church with the school attached. They also had a hospital in town. The people of that hospital-and-school-church stopped doing some…

God asked, “Where are you hiding?” — Genesis 3:9 Do you honestly think God didn’t already know? “Where can I hide from you, O God? Everywhere I go, you’re already there!” — Psalm  139:7,8 So why do we keep trying, even  now and then, to hide from God?

Robert Morwell is a friend IRL and a United Methodist activist pastor in our Conference (and he happens to be married to the sister of a very close friend of mine from like 4th grade onward, but that’s another story for another time). He wrote this yesterday, and it’s with his gracious permission that I…

As we move on through Lent, please join me in this prayer — Grant us the stamina of the athlete, the vision of the mystic, and the soul of one who lives to please you, the praiseworthy God of creation and imagination. Amen. — Judy Skeen, Disciplines 18, page 51

Matthew Gaston writes — A counselor friend reminds me from his practice that instead of focusing on the ‘why’ questions in a crisis, he helps his clients to focus on the ‘what’ questions: What can I learn from this? What can I do differently going forward because of this experience? ‘What’ questions give energy; ‘why’…

Families planning funerals are changing. It’s been my honor to be involved with some in this process. Here’s a song a family requested, and the lyrics I used in my homily that day — Now hear the sailors cry Smell the sea and feel the sky Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic Too late…

Families planning funerals are changing. It’s been my honor work with them in this process. Here’s a song a family requested, and the lyrics I used in my homily that day — For all those times you stood by me For all the truth that you made me see For all the joy you brought…