This is a shot outside our townhouse. As you can probably guess, there isn’t a ton of green space around where we live. There are a couple of nice parks that are very close (and people remind us that Grant Park is also close, but it’s about five blocks...

Lingering at the cross

Before United Methodist pastors get fully ordained, they have to write a pretty long paper touching many points of theology, church life, the ministry, the sacraments, etc. Then they go in front of a small group of other pastors (and a layperson or two) and...

I firmly believe that when Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn’t give them a theory, he gave them a meal. Of course, the earliest exponent of that meal (Paul, in 1 Corinthians) insists that it matters quite a lot that you understand what you are about as you come to share in it; but still it is the meal, not the understanding, that is the primary vehicle of meaning.

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The grace of a Bob Ross t-shirt

My friend David posted this as a Facebook status update last week:  "I think the Bob Ross ‘painter of happy little clouds and trees’ t-shirt I am wearing should be quite intimidating to the other team when playing volleyball later today.“ I...

“One is enough”

We had a day-long retreat yesterday exploring ways to read the Bible and at the end of the day, we had a lot of sandwiches and cans of pop left over. We kept encouraging people to take a lot home and many people took us up on that offer so that there were folks...

Call them cheesy, kitschy, superficial if you must, but there are some pieces of “culture” (aka guilty pleasures) in our lives that we secretly love. ABBA is always a good one. The Brady Bunch. People Magazine. The above scene would probably qualify, too....

It was a fascinating day as a father yesterday. This picture was in the Chicago Tribune yesterday as my daughter was captured participating in the 100th birthday celebration for the Girl Scouts. I, of course, put it on my Facebook page and allowed the world to revel...

Catch

A few weeks ago, I was grumbling about the lack of a real winter and it’s still freakishly warm in March here, but it certainly doesn’t do me any good to complain about that. Instead about an hour ago, my daughter asked me to play catch. There’s a...