It is possible for us to have our church building where it is because the College of William and Mary allows us to park across the street on weekdays after 5:00 PM, and all day on Saturdays and Sundays.  What if that parking is taken away?  We would have to move to another location.  What [...]

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Last Friday, I stopped in Fountain Books, on Cary Street in Shockoe Bottom (Richmond), and saw that Kent Haruf had published a new novel.  I bought the book there, paying about $10 more than I would have on amazon.com.  But, if Fountain Books hadn’t had a copy on their shelf, I wouldn’t have even known [...]

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It’s pouring, so no Saturday morning club ride.  Sigh … What it means, though, is that I have an unscheduled morning.  That’s a rare thing.  I was originally scheduled to spend today in Richmond, as chaplain to those meeting with the Virginia Synod Candidacy Committee (the committee that approves candidates to enter seminary, and then [...]

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Got back late last night, from the funeral for my Uncle Bob. 850 miles of driving in two days. But how essential it was to re-connect with beloved family members, and to mourn my Dad as I listened to the pastor talk about his brother, my Uncle Bob. They had significant differences between them, but [...]

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My phone is two years old. (I know, that makes me a direct link to the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth.) Actually, I only learned that my phone is two years old a couple of days ago, when I received a sales phone call from Verizon or Samsung. A chirpy voice said, “Since your [...]

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I am astonished that a Christian leader would take such a position. And I am embarrassed — because in the news coverage, most people will register the fact that the “offending” pastor who was reprimanded by his superior was, simply,  “Lutheran,” without knowing the vast differences that have developed between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America [...]

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I’m not often inspired by constitutional language! But it is significant to read Luther’s teaching about the Word of God, as it is formulated in our congregation’s constitution (which is the wording in the constitution of every congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America). There are three senses of the Word of God: • [...]

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Thank you for the electric light that came on this morning when I turned the switch, in the pre-dawn darkness. Thank you for the hot coffee I poured into my mug. Thank you for the furnace that’s heating the house. Thank you for the warm fleece clothing I have put on my body. Thank you [...]

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Every now and then I dip into Dorothy Day’s diaries.  On September 16, 1978, she offers a quote from Dostoevsky: “Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”  That gets your attention, doesn’t it? That’s useful!  In our culture, love = romance.  For followers of Jesus, though, love is [...]

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In her most recent column, Kathleen Parker mourns the inevitable demise of print media. It’s a wonderful piece. (You should Google it!  And yes, I am aware of the irony of writing that last sentence!) I’m struck by a couple of Parker’s sentences that bear on what we are about as church, in particular: “The [...]

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