Continuing my speculative reflection on what might have been going through Jesus’ mind the week of his crucifixion… Jesus crossed a crucial point-of-no-return by his actions in the temple. He became not just a nuisance, but an enemy of the Roman empire. It was just a matter of hours or […]
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” (Philippians 2:5) is reverberating through my head as I approach this year’s Holy Week. Now, I realize that I am treading on thin ice here, but my reflections for this week are nothing but my limited attempts to […]
I received a wonderful email from one of my “kids” (a member of a youth group I led in 1978) who tracked me down and shared a humbling note. Here is part of what she wrote: …over the past thirty-five years I have attended Presbyterian, Episcopal and Methodist churches, and […]
Those who know me well know that my 2012 crawled to a close with a whimper and a moan. An old back injury flared up with a bone spur off my spine that keeps me in a constant state of excruciating pain and chronic distress. I have NEVER experienced pain […]
Like everyone else, Raleigh Hayes saw the world, and the people with whom he was obliged to share it, through the kaleidoscope of his own colored designs. As the years turned the viewer round and round, the bits of glass fell into new patterns, but the perspective remained limited to Raleigh’s eye. […]
Concepts of separation of church and state, the divide between science/academia and religion, faith and politics are generally muddy and misinformed. Early attempts to guarantee religious freedom and protect against theocracy have come to mean, in some minds, that the physical and the metaphysical should have nothing in common. And when […]
Back in 2006, I spoke to the Western New York Annual Conference about living the “Gifts, Graces, and Fruit of the Spirit.” (Based on my sensational book, Beyond Money — no longer in print, so contact Discipleship Resources at the General Board of Discipleship and raise a stink…) For the Fruit of […]
I am getting over the news that Ray Bradbury died. He lived a full and amazing 91 years, but even so, the news hits me hard. I discovered Ray Bradbury when I was eleven years old – R is for Rocket was the book — and in the next few […]
Okay, following a surreal April (Korea, a week on the road in-state, two weeks at GC in Tampa) I took a week off to reflect, reconsider, and to hack my way through a rotten chest cold. Now I am back to review what the heck happened at General Conference — […]
Okay, friends, what have we learned? First, General Conference is hard. It is emotionally, physically and spiritually taxing. It demands a Herculean amount of concentration and effort, sifting and sorting and making sense of thousands (literally) of pages of very tiny print of churchy legalese. And it is not perfect. We […]
United Methodeviations 