During the ELCA Churchwide Assembly this week, a colleague from seminary, Scott Johnson, who is now Bishop of the Nebraska Synod, posted a piece he had written back in February with a view toward the election of the next Presiding Bishop of the ELCA (one of the major agenda items …
It’s been a few weeks since the sentencing after the verdict in the trial of Mohammed Noor in Minneapolis … for shooting an unarmed citizen while on duty as a Minneapolis police officer. That shooting happened in July 2017, not long after a jury in Ramsey County found former Saint …
About a month ago, we marked the first anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In a little less than two months, it will be the anniversary of the shooting at Santa Fe High School near Houston, Texas. Next month, it will be …
Now that all the shouting is over, can we take a pause and take a collective breath? Can we reflect on what just happened and talk about it? I think Dr. Christine Blassey Ford told more of the truth than Judge Brent Kavanaugh. I also hope none of us is …
One of the joys of parenthood is introducing your children (as they reach appropriate ages) to significant pieces of culture from before their time (significant, at least, in the eyes of the parents). A few summers back, my husband and I seized on the window of opportunity (our children being …
Four weeks ago, as of last Thursday, I was headed off on a reluctant return errand to a store I generally visit only once a month because it is a fair drive from home. I misremembered whether it was north or south that I wouldn’t be able to go directly …
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light … That’s where we’re headed in Advent, these words from Isaiah that we’ll read on Christmas Eve. Advent is a journey set in the darkest weeks of the year, as the days grow shorter and shorter. Even after …
Because Easter fell rather late this year, the commemoration of the theologian Anselm of Canterbury on April 21st falls within the first week of Easter. Maybe it’s because these events are so close this year … Maybe it’s because I spent Lent reading Walter Wangerin Jr.’s The Book of Sorrows …
Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote “The Second Coming” in 1919, during the aftermath of World War I. American history books don’t attend to this, but “the war to end all wars” was not only a profound social-political crisis for Europe; it was a spiritual and theological one as well. …
In some traditions, there is a custom known as “St. Martin’s Advent” or Celtic Advent by which the season begins November 16th so as to be 40 days before Christmas, balancing the season of Lent, which is 40 days before Easter (not counting Sundays). It is with a view to …