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Fellowship of Saints and Sinners

“I’m telling you the truth:  if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.  Nothing will be impossible for you.  But this kind only comes out by prayer and fasting.”  Matthew 17: 20,21 Jesus’ claim here is weird because…

“Make ready for the Christ, whose smile- like lightning- sets free the song of everlasting glory that now sleeps in your paper flesh- like dynamite.”-Thomas Merton Just the other day my son played his first basketball game as the only white kid in the 6-and-under age category on his team, “The Freedom Riders,” (which plays…

Mark Driscoll, the founding and preaching pastor of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church, apparently has a new book out titled Real Marriage:  The Truth About Sex, Friendship and Life Together.  I was introduced to Driscoll’s book by a friend (Rachel Held-Evans) of a friend (Michael Frost) on Facebook, and while I have not read it, I now feel…

Just the other day I heard someone speculate that 2012 could be the year of Jesus’ return.  At the very least, we weren’t getting any further away from the day.  But, if you’re wondering whether to stop investing in your 401K plan and start building a fallout shelter, or make for the highest summit closest…

“You’ve been given the gift of knowing the secrets of the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus replied, “but they haven’t been given it.  Anyone who already has something will be given more, and they will have plenty. But anyone who has nothing- even what they have will be taken away!  That’s why I speak to them…

I recently finished a wonderful, little book by Yale historian Carlos Eire. The book lives up to its name: it manages to cover in relative brevity the breathtaking expanse of “eternity” from its very first beginnings in antiquity to its life (or lack thereof) in the present.  As the offspring of Eire’s involvement in a…

Almost ten years ago, I, at the time a seminary student preparing for ministry in the Presbyterian church, confessed my sins to a Catholic priest and received the sacrament of reconciliation:  I cried tears of repentance, received absolution for my sin and was then challenged to go do one good work as “penance.” I walked…

The other day I was asked to be the back-up wedding officiant for someone who had obtained their certificate of ordination off the Internet. Another person in the conversation had chimed in that she had once officiated at a wedding, thanks to this same booming online trade in ministerial credentials- at which point, an “Ooh,…

My next-door neighbor, in addition to being a photographer, is a fire dancer: she gets paid to perform well-choreographed tricks with hot flames while wearing sexy outfits.  Yesterday several other parents and I were at her house to celebrate her son’s third birthday when another mother stumbled upon a set of books.  They weren’t just…

You can’t miss his gallery shack.  It overlooks the ocean on a stretch of coastal highway near St. Petersburg, Florida.  His driftwood sculptures are perched in front:  an ensemble of rotted tree branches, old fish nets, rusty pieces of metal- anything that the sea coughs up somewhere along the Floridian coast, which is where Johnny…
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