Stop. Take a slow, deep breath. Fill your diaphragm first and then let it out slowly. Try it again, closing your eyes perhaps. Ah. There is a relentless car alarm blaring at us, emanating from … [Read more...]
What Hope Looks Like
Honestly, it is difficult to move beyond scalding words this week, or morose millstones nobody but nobody needs to hear. It is bad out there in the nation, especially in those many states New York has … [Read more...]
BONES
We are in the endangered days of a global pandemic when we are navigating uncertainty and acting in ways we never have before. We are alive in dangerous times – not only for our bodies and our … [Read more...]
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas. On one level Christmas has been hidden in the Miller house this year. That is because we are moving and we expected to be in our new home before Christmas. So we packed … [Read more...]
Is this sermon about hope?
If I can be personal for a moment, I want to echo Wendell Berry’s poem about trees: “They are the advent they await.” Advent, an arrival or emergence, or as we say in church-speak, a … [Read more...]
Hope: Work For It
This is about hope. It is about hope in hard times when hope is hard work even for people who are by nature optimistic. It begins with a man and a story we might imagine has absolutely … [Read more...]
To My Grandson, a Note in a Bottle
Ptolemy World Map 1467 To my grandson. My Dearest Declan, Just this week for the first time, you escaped your play blanket on your own. Your mom and dad celebrated it by texting us all a … [Read more...]
Hope Rises
After thirty-plus years of preaching sermons flow naturally. The rhythm of my week more or less moves between the banks of sermon preparation and sermon delivery. Sunday after church, I pop the … [Read more...]
The Morning After
It is the morning after. The sun came up gilding tomorrow with hope or lacing your heart with despair. But what is the difference between hope, wishful thinking, or conversely, despair? We need to … [Read more...]
A Future Not Our Own
A prayer attributed* to the late Roman Catholic archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, begins: It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our … [Read more...]