Earlier this month, I spent a week at Saint Andrew’s Abbey.  Located in the high desert of Valyermo, this community of seventeen Benedictine monks welcomes individuals and groups to take retreats with them.  Visitors stay in one of the Abbey’s guest rooms and can join the monks for daily meals and prayer.   I try… Read More

Earlier this month, the United States Surgeon General called for immediate action to address a public health epidemic. The problem Dr. Vivek Murthy named was not a new virus like COVID-19, nor was it a medical condition like cancer. It was a social condition with devastating consequences on the country’s mental, physical, and emotional life.… Read More

The 40 days of Lent are desert times.  The season, which extends from February 22nd to April 8th this year, reminds us of the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the Judean wilderness (Matthew 4:1-2).  It recalls the 40 years that the children of ancient Israel traveled through the Sinai desert (Numbers 14:33).  Lent is… Read More

Questions of identity get at the heart of the Christian life.  I had a spiritual director out in Connecticut who was fond of saying that the core spiritual question is, ‘Who am I?’  I originally met with this director not to talk about myself, but to talk about God.   I had read Richard Foster’s A… Read More

Night grows long this time of year. Back on June 21st, the summer solstice, daylight stretched more than four hours longer each day than it will through this month of December. I often wonder how people living much further from the equator than us manage through the long, dark days of winter. In Barrow, the… Read More

Thank God for summer.  The season affords many of us the chance to temporarily step away from our ordinary routines to enter a different rhythm.  For at least a week or two – and sometimes longer (as in the case of this lucky sabbatical-taking pastor) – we depart from places we call home to visit… Read More

These last two years have left many of us exhausted.  The challenges posed by COVID-19 have been formidable and unrelenting.  We have had to repeatedly adapt to new conditions in schools, workplaces, and community spaces.  And while doing so, we have been operating in a hyper-aroused state, anxious that we or someone we love could… Read More

Over the forty days of Lent, many Christian churches refrain from saying “alleluia.” The word, along with its variant “halleluja,” is the transliteration of a Hebrew word meaning “Praise Yahweh” (or simply “Praise God”).   “Alleluia” and “hallelujah” imagine a worshiper erupting in joyful praise.  The more penitential character of Lent can make such celebratory… Read More

As the pandemic approaches the two-year mark, many of us are feeling exhausted.  What we hoped might be a brief ordeal of a few months or weeks is stretching into years.  An anticipated 10k race turned into a marathon.  Then as 2021 neared its end, we thought we might be glimpsing the 26-mile mark just… Read More