Walking in the Way and Stumbling Toward Faithfulness

Category: Uncategorized

  • That’s the Way Love is…

    An old Quaker saying, inspired by a passage from John Woolman’s Journal, encourages us to “Let love be the first motion.” That is, let love—rather than fear, anger, woundedness, pride, power, privilege, or arrogance—be our first step toward others and the situations we face. It is the reminder to let love—rather than the need to…

  • Yearning and Yielding: Living Together in the Life and Power of God

         When I received the invitation from ESR to consider serving as this year’s Perkins Family lecturer, I was immediately concerned for the Perkins family. You see, along with the invitation came a reminder that the previous speakers were Parker Palmer and Anne Lamott. So, of course, I thought, “Oh my gosh! The Perkins family…

  • We may (not) be experiencing technical difficulties…

    Thanks to the new bottle of shampoo my wife recently purchased, my life is about to take a sudden and dramatic turn for the better! Just when I thought my body could no longer fight off the relentless attacks of so many determined foes—time, gravity, bad genes, poor nutrition, stress, unnecessary abuse—she found a new…

  • Bucket List

    I am not very good at making New Year’s resolutions. Actually, I used to be great at making them. It was the keeping of them that often proved challenging…so I opted out of this annual practice of planned failure. My resolve to not make resolutions came into question a few months ago, however, when someone…

  • ENOUGH! For the Love of God–ENOUGH!

    Several years ago, I sat in the home of an elderly Palestinian couple living on Mt. Gerizim above the city of Nablus in the West Bank. Before dinner, two other guests arrived to talk with the old man about their efforts to heal some of the divisions within the broader Palestinian community. As a business…

  • On Death part 7: Being at Peace with God

    Many years ago, I became acquainted with an older woman who devoted much of her life to social justice. Raised in a more conservative Christian home, she rejected her childhood faith for a more humanistic approach to life and a spirituality she described as “universal and mysterious.” Now in her early 80s, this remarkable lady…

  • On Death Part 6: Being at Peace with Others

    Several months ago, one of my dearest friends told me, “I am dead to him,” because I left my staff position within an organization where he serves as a board member. He was joking—I think?!? In his consistently cruel and kind way, he was telling me I would be missed under the guise of saying…

  • On Death part 5: Being at Peace with Ourselves

    Sometimes, the journey toward death can reveal the fissures and fractures in our lives and expose the same in relationships we share with other people. As the end draws near and we face our mortality, it also often creates space for us to reflect on our relationship, or lack of relationship, with our Creator. I…

  • Death part 4: The dance we must do alone…but not necessarily by ourselves

    One of my favorite songs is the hauntingly beautiful For a Dancer by Jackson Browne. The lyrics include: I don’t know what happens when people die.Can’t seem to grasp it as hard as I try. It’s like a song I can hear playing right in my ear, But I can’t sing, I can’t help listening.…

  • On Death (part 3): After you, my dear…

    My wife and I will celebrate our 40th anniversary in the next few months. Assuming she doesn’t come to her senses between now and then, we plan a weekend getaway with our children and grandchildren. Next Spring, we hope to travel to somewhere fun to play, celebrate, and wrap our heads around how four decades…