> culture
Why the Good Old Days Never Were
[callout]This piece also appears on ALTARWORK.com.[/callout] Sometimes I catch myself thinking about my own good old days. Maybe you, too? I look back to a previous season in life and get all the feels. I romanticize what was and think, "If I only I could go back."...
Call Me a Fool
In our US American culture, we generally label someone highly educated as "wise." If so, then I'm one of the supposed wise, and my perceived wisdom is also broad. I hold two degrees and am working on my third. These three degrees span vastly different, yet uniquely...
The Power of Story in Preventing Suicide
His name was Billy. He was 15. I was 15, too. It was the first time I remember being this close to suicide. [featured-image single_newwindow="false"] Billy was a teen in our church youth group in Nashville. He seemed a happy-go-lucky sort of guy. Sure, we knew there...
Black Lives Matter, Too
I cannot help but notice the beautiful parallels between current social justice protests in US America and the ancient Hebrew story of Job. The two narratives have many similarities. Job is in darkness, suffering the silence -- or bad advice -- of his friends, the...
Offensive Grace
This week's episode of the Reimagining Podcast concerning reimagining grace has me ... well ... reimagining grace. Imagine that! Ha. Since I'm more of a Hebrew Scripture guy, I don't think grace is a purely New Testament thing. Sure, Jesus shows us what both divine...
The Lost Art of Dialogue
When on trial for his life, Socrates called himself a gadfly. He called the institutional political machine a slow, dim-witted horse. My guess is the politicians putting him on trial -- the very ones he likened to the horse -- were not very pleased. They ceased the...
Why Must Ignorance Be Bliss?
Why do so many of us prefer to remain willfully ignorant or at least blissfuly unaware? We develop assumptions. These assumptions, or opinions, are formed over years, through experiences, through what we are taught, through how we are shaped by our societal, cultural,...
Is Knowledge Different from Opinion?
[callout]A version of this post also appears on ALTARWORK.com.[/callout] Too often in Western public discourse, I think we do not delineate rightly between knowledge and opinion. Political talking heads, religious leaders, and "experts" of many stripes offer us all...
The Metaphysics of Eating, Listening, and Leisure
If you happen to be part of typical North American organized church you have rather limited options for activities to engage in that announce God's Kingdom: weekly "worship services," maybe some Bible study classes, perhaps a big service project once in a while. You...
The Gift of Leisure
We often think of "leisure" as laid back time, nothing to do, nothing to worry about. But leisure is not idleness. A more robust understanding of leisure is informed by classical Greek and Roman thought which sees leisure as an attitude of the mind or condition of the...
A Meditation Regarding Change
Change is a natural and constant part of life. Change happens on the individual level and the communal level. Change is something we create and something that happens to us. [featured-image single_newwindow="false"] The following is a simple prayer I've revisited in...
Glimpses of the Good
Too often, I think, we forget that we all desire the good. Sometimes it takes tragedies, like the recent spate in Orlando, to remind us of our first love. [featured-image single_newwindow="false"] In recent years, I've realized that all my vocational endeavors have...