The Commons

Certain writers I can only read in small doses, not because they are difficult to process but because they are so addictive that if I don’t break away from their spell I’ll start sounding like them. Scottish Jesuit priest Gerard “Gerry” William Hughes (1924-2014). His 1985 book, God of Surprises,…

Here’s the idea for a second sermon that seeks to help our people understand the theological differences between the three stages of faith: justification, sanctification, and glorification. I am thinking of these three referents for each one of the “tions”:  Activate—-Animate—-Liberate. In other words, faith activation (justification) requires faith animation…

God gave Abram a calling to leave Haran, step into the unknown, and “father” a people. At age 99, God called Abram to the higher calling of becoming Abraham, to be a “high father,” the father of many generations who would “bless all peoples of the earth” (Gen12:2-3). Each of…

One sermon for 14 August 2016 is “Keep on Walking,” an ancient Jewish reframing of the story of the Red Sea Crossing that is very different from the Hollywood version of the story. I did not have time in the sermon (it came with one additional reflection on the text)…

               “There is no single definition of holiness: there are dozens, hundreds. But there is one I am particularly fond of: being holy means getting up immediately every time you fall, with humility, and joy. It doesn’t mean never falling into sin. It means being able to say, ‘Yes, Lord,…

Some poets appear on the horizon with a poem, and then disappear, with little else known about them except for that one poem. William Hurd Hillyer (1880-c.1931) is one such poem. We know when he was born, but not sure when he died. But when he published “My Master’s Face,”…

As soon as you enter my home we have named “Dolphin Cay,” on the floor there is a mosaic of “St. Brendan’s Cross,” an Irish “fish cross” made of four dolphins or whales. There are many apocryphal seafaring stories about St. Brendan, who according to one of the legends “discovered”…

A Hebrew scholar once noted that the first word of the Ten Commandments is “I” and the last word is “neighbor”  

If you need a Good Samaritan story, here is R. Bruce McPherson’s “A Tire Iron Parable” One morning in early November I was driving north on the Dan Ryan Expressway toward the Loop in our relatively new car, alone with my thoughts and National Public Radio. Suddenly my right rear…

This is an old parable but it always touches me and reminds me that we find in life what we are looking for. Two birds that fly over the California desert are the vulture and the hummingbird.  All the vulture can see is rotting meat because that is all it…