Category Archives: Faith & Witness

Girl in fairy dress in a field

I Do Believe in Fairies! I Do! I Do!

I do believe in fairies. And I’m going to clap my hands and shout it at the top of my lungs, just like Peter Pan did to save Tinkerbell from Captain Hook. Do you remember that scene in Peter Pan after Captain Hook has poisoned

Dove flying in Lisbon, Portugal

Re-Imaging as a Way of Discovering God-Within-Us

In this world of multi-media and ‘the age of information,’ we can find someone who says something about anything. What I mean is this: if you want to go out and find an article that tells you “God hates shrimp,” you can find it and

Dove flying in Lisbon, Portugal

Loving Our Straight Neighbors

Last July, I attended a close relative’s wedding shower that had the misfortune of being held one day before Congress voted on the Federal Marriage Amendment. Not having had the clairvoyant luxury of knowing SJR 40 would get shot down in cloture, I was, understandably

Dove flying in Lisbon, Portugal

Ontologically Incapable

It was 1994 and I was a seminarian serving as the Legislative Aide to the House of Bishops’ Committee on Constitution at the General Convention in Indianapolis. The chair of that committee was William Wantland – the then Bishop of Eau Claire – and he

Stained glass window image of Jesus

Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up

My Earliest Memory My earliest memory of Jesus in church was a shadowy yellow stained glass picture of Jesus in a dark hall in the Southside Baptist Church in Spartanburg, SC, that I attended with my parents when I was less than six years old.

Two men sitting and waiting

Osama Is My Neighbor

I can tell you the exact moment that Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean lost my vote. It was January 11, 2004 when an audience member at an Iowa primary forum asked Dean to stop “mean mouthing” President George W. Bush. According to news reports, Dale

Two men sitting and waiting

I Am My Neighbor

When someone asks us, “Who is our neighbor?” we always feel we know what the right answer must be. Our neighbor is somebody absolutely obnoxious: the biggest jerk we can think of. Being neighborly to this character would be like taking castor oil. It’s a

Two men sitting and waiting

Loving Without Boundaries

Many people ask me at times, “What’s so difficult to YOU about being a Christian? You don’t subscribe to all of the dogmatic literalism, in fact, you’re too liberal for most liberal Christians. You don’t have all the little rules and formalities about liturgy and

Two men sitting and waiting

New Wine in New Wineskins

It’s not that Jesus ever asked us to like people; rather he commanded us to love others. And there’s a world of difference between liking and loving. Any woman in a violent domestic situation may love the man who regularly beats her up, but she