Frequently, in a journey of the soul, the most precious moments are the mistakes. – John O’Donohue   Perhaps because I grew up in a church tradition steeped in preoccupation with sin and how to get sin out of our lives, perhaps also because I have discovered that most...

I once watched a children’s presentation in a worship service that had a character who became impatient with the absence of visible growth in some seeds he had planted.  He consults an agricultural expert and learns that he had perhaps not done the planting correctly...

This year our calendar offered us the whimsical opportunity to celebrate Easter on April Fool’s Day.  While the latter is not considered a day with spiritual significance, I wonder if that might be a mistaken perception, a perception the calendar fates were attempting...

Miracles cluster around us this week, with the calendar bringing both Easter stories of resurrection and Passover stories of liberation, all while the miracle of spring’s return shows up in the first buds and flowers.  For all our emphasis on a scientific worldview...

As a result of several mild days with more sunlight, I noticed the first evidences of blooming in my neighborhood.  Then, as is usually the case at this point in the calendar, more winter weather came.  Now I am worrying about those early bloomers, whether they will...

As a way of coping with the frequent relocations required by my career in ministry, I learned early on to be largely inattentive to place.  No sense in getting attached to a particular home or a particular neighborhood, I figured, since I would not be there for long. ...

In Gift from the Sea, author Anne Morrow Lindbergh observes how we tend to interpret the waning of passion in a relationship as something negative, a sign of things gone wrong.  To counter that conclusion, Lindbergh develops the metaphor of tides that alternate...

The area in which I live had its first snowstorm and serious cold of the season during the last few days.  As happens every year with winter, I watched myself and my neighbors learn, again, the different functioning that winter requires:  extra layers of clothing,...

A favorite story that shows up in Christmas sermons and candlelight services each year recounts the presentation of a Christmas pageant in which a developmentally challenged young man plays the role of the innkeeper who turns away Mary and Joseph when they are seeking...