The Little Friar

For 2018:

No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven's glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. O God within my breast, Almighty, ever-present Deity! Life--that in me has rest, As I--undying Life--have power in Thee! Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; Worthless as wither'd weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main, To waken doubt in one Holding so fast by Thine Infinity; So surely anchor'd on The steadfast rock of immortality. With wide-embracing love Thy Spirit animates eternal years, Pervades and broods above, Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. Though earth and man were gone, And suns and universes ceased to be, And Thou were left alone, Every existence would exist in Thee. There is not room for Death, Nor atom that his might could render void: Thou--Thou art Being and Breath, And what Thou art may never be destroyed. -- ...

Almighty God, you have poured upon us the new light of your incarnate Word:  Grant that this light, enkindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

I was visiting a few weeks ago with one of my former (undergrad) profs, on a college visit for the family's next generation of potential Carson-Newman Eagles.  At that time, Dr Brummett asked my niece if she read as voraciously as I read. I've always had an appetite for books.  I started in middle school, reading all sorts of nature and science books from the library and graduated in late middle school to history books.  By the time I made it to high school, I had read more than lots of others -- particularly in the "classics" and in philosophy.  In college, my reading branched in a number of different directions, and it's really only grown since. Usually I'm asked how I can read as much as I do.  Depending on genre, I'm reading about 150 pages an hour on average.  Novels, though, have always been difficult for me to read.  I enjoy them.  In my more snooty moments, I sometimes think the first question every candidate for ordination should be...

Walter Wangerin's Wounds Are Where the Light Comes In is a collection of personal stories that explores all the little (and sometimes big) ways that God can intervene in our daily lives.  There are two such stories that stand out to me.  First, the story of Diane who was sexually abused by her father.  It's one of the stories in this book that kept me riveted and broke my heart at the same time.  Wangerin has a way of drawing his reader in, making them part of the story as he tells it from his vantage point.  His ability to translate emotion and communicate in a way that connects and moves his read is impressive. Then there's the story of Junie Piper, whom Wangerin visits in prison.  After numerous visits where it doesn't seem as if Wangerin is getting through to him, he receives a collect phone call.  On the other end of that phone call is Piper who simply says, "I love you" to Wangerin.  After hanging up the phone, Wangerin wept and knew t...

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.  Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:  'A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more' (Matthew 2.16-18). I think a lot these days about this part of the first Christmas narrative.  I wonder how it speaks for God -- or not for God -- because the day we observe their murder (December 28th every year) strikes a very strange cord in relationship to the symphony around the culture's Christmas celebrations. Yet, truth be told, this part of Jesus' birth story rings more true for most of the world. Perhaps no event in the gospel more determinatively challenges the sentimental depiction of Christmas than the d...

I was asked to write an article for one of the local Christian magazines, particularly around the topic of men and spirituality.  Beneath the fold is the article I submitted today.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1.1). This year, I had the arduous task of trying to find just the right Christmas card for my beloved.  Have you ever tried searching through the card aisle in the stores prior to Christmas?  Particularly looking for that one card -- though mass-produced (oh, the irony!) -- that will say just what you want it to say?  It's a veritable Christmas miracle if you actually locate said card.  (For the record, I did.)  Words are such ordinary things.  We say so many of them every day.  Around 15,000 if the scholars of words are to be trusted. But the Word God speaks, at the beginning, isn't like that.  It's not just intended to communicate factual information like a history or a science book exactly.  And it's not a Word of warning; not a "You better be good for goodness sake ..." (although perhaps too often religious people make it seem that way).  ...

You have increased their joy and given them great gladness; they rejoiced before you as with joy at the harvest. For you have shattered the yoke that burdened them; the collar that lay heavy on their shoulders. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given , and the government will be upon his shoulders. And his name will be called: Wonderful Counselor; the Mighty God; the Everlasting Father; the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and uphold it with justice and righteousness. From this time forth and for evermore; the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. -- from Isaiah 9

O God, you make us glad by the yearly festival of the birth of your only Son Jesus Christ:  Grant that we, who joyfully receive him as our Redeemer, may with sure confidence behold him when he comes to be our Judge; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Christmas is about human exclusion as much as divine solidarity.  "He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him" (John 1.11). A couple excluded from the hotels and guest-houses of their home town, and later forced to flee as refugees from state persecution.  A child who is excluded from his community and eventually from life itself, dying in solidarity with all who suffered the shame of crucifixion. The best way to celebrate Christmas, therefore, is to reflect on -- and repent of -- the way we exclude other people and other voices from intruding on our comfortable existence. I think today, Christmas Eve, especially of my Palestinian Christian brethren.  They are caught in a vulnerable position between, on the one hand, an aggressive Israeli settler movement and an equally aggressive Islamist militancy, on the other.  Rarely, if ever, are their voices heard in mainstream secular news media. The only exposure to Palestinians on "Christian" news c...

Christian Knapp's The Last Christians:  Stories of Persecution, Flight, Resilience in the Middle East gives voice to some of the West's most neglected stories about Christian persecution in the land of Christian origins:  Northern Iraq and Syria.  A German priest who works with Christian refugees, Knapp captures the exasperation and desperation that these brothers and sisters in Christ share as a result of religious persecution.  The rise of ISIS and the heightened violence between Islamic sects has made the survival of these Christian sects, some of whom still speak Aramaic dialects that date back to the time of Jesus, a tenuous proposition.  Perhaps the most important contribution of The Last Christians is the historical context that Knapp explores -- a context that most of us in the West remain oblivious toward.  His background material on the Armenian and Assyrian genocides by the Ottoman Empire, aided and abetted by the Germans for tactical re...

Anthony Bartlett's Seven Stories:  How to Study and Teach the Nonviolent Bible is the Bible-study resource for nonviolence that I've been waiting decades for! It's a how-to manual.  Seven Stories helps readers work through the drama of redemption about the great story of how God in Christ unmasks, challenges and subverts the myth of redemptive violence in our religions and our cultures.  It shows us a way forward to a nonviolent reading of Scripture and practice in our lives and world.  To those who recognize the voice of Rene Girard here, well done.  Bartlett is one of the masters of integrating the gospel and Girard for the 21st century. The study begins with "method" but quickly works toward reading the narratives of Scripture that point toward the nonviolent redemption God is working in Israel and supremely in Jesus.   This is a resource that small groups in church school settings should use and re-use every year, but it is also suited for...

Vindicating the Vixens  Revisiting sexualized, vilified, and marginalized women of the Bible is a collection of essays, edited by Sandra Glahn, that explores the various ways in which our Western readings of the biblical text have actually forced us into false readings. For example, the woman Jesus met at the well in Samaria had five husbands, true enough (see John 4).  But why do most people assume that means she was faithless and immoral?  Women in her time and place did not divorce husbands five times.  The man with the most recorded divorces had only three.  If a woman did initiate legal proceedings, she had to do so through a male.  Women could not simply walk into a court of law and speak on their own behalf.  So, it's unlikely that "the Samaritan woman" had divorced five husbands. Additionally, when we read that this woman's current man was not her own, we assume she was living with some guy.  Because that's what it would mean in the We...

Those who know me really well, know that my heart and soul is deeply connected to the land in which I live -- and in my case, that is specifically the Appalachian region.  This mountain place and its people have made an indelible mark on my soul. And Devotions from the Mountains does the same thing for its readers.  The mountains provide a place for the soul to experience peace, grandeur and freshness.  Devotions from the Mountains  invites you to spend a quiet moment in reflection each day, finding peace and drawing closer to God -- the Creator of heaven and earth. Inside you'll find 90 inspirational readings, Scripture verses, prayers, and breathtaking imagery of God's mountain handiwork sculpted and brought to life by God's hand. ______________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

You are the Beloved:  Daily Meditation for Spiritual Living brings together some of Henri Nouwen's most important words about living the spiritual life together into a collection of daily meditations for use for a full year.  A former Catholic priest who spent most of his life with solitude, contemplating the depths of the human interaction with the Divine, even in the dark moments of loneliness and loss, Nouwen offers a spiritual vision for human thriving that one cannot find in lots of other spirituality books these days.  Here, readers will find daily meditations offer soothing and thoughtful insights into pain and healing, nonviolence and love, suffering, and compassion, among other subjects.  In one reflection, Nouwen reminds readers to reject society's loud messages proclaiming that we must prove our belovedness through our looks or our wealth:  "Each one of us is unique, known by name, and loved by the One who fashioned us".  Another heart...

Recently a friend was lamenting something that all-too-many of us Christians have found ourselves lamenting over the past few years:  Given the human propensity for inhumanity toward one another, Earth hardly seems the place God would make a home -- particularly as a vulnerable child out in the cold.  Surely the Divine has better things to do and better places to do them. In short, we despair.  A lot. Some weeks ago, I was talking with someone who was confused.  "You're a Christian?  But you're young, relatively healthy, sharp and quick witted.  Why would you need to go to church?" Church was where the old and the poor and the disabled went -- people who were desperate.  People who needed consolation. And let's be honest here:  She wasn't all that wrong. The "Holiday Season" is upon us.  That period on the secular calendar that marks the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  It's our annual cultural festivity around al...

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

/begin rant/ Some years ago, amidst all that stuff over whether congregations should begin having "contemporary worship services" as alternatives to "traditional services", I snarkily commented that "contemporary services" are the worship equivalent of a diet centered entirely around Mountain Dew and Doritoes.  Yeah, it probably tastes good, it's appealing to younger folks, and it's easy to deliver, but in the end it's absolutely unhealthy.  I stand by that observation to this day. I can't count the number of times I've observed congregations embrace this liturgical move.  And I get it:  They're attempting to utilize worship as evangelism, in an effort to get more people into the Church.  (Newsflash:  Worship isn't and shouldn't be evangelism.  Worship is worship.  It's about God.  Not about us.  If you're utilizing worship toward some other end, you've already fallen down the rabbit hole of idolatry.  But ...

Twenty-something years ago now, I read Philip Turner's Money, Sex, & Power:  An Essay in Christian Social Ethics .  There was an insight early in that book that has stayed with me ever since:  Early Christian monastic revolutionaries focused on the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience for a reason.  Those are the three temptations of leadership that must be controlled for leadership to be faithful. It's an insight I've returned to again and again in exploring the moral life with pastors -- and with politicians.  American politics is not about morality.  It's about power.  Particularly, American politics is about amassing as much power as one might in order to rig the American experiment toward one's own version of reality.  Put another way, American evangelicals supported Trump not because he was moral but because they wanted to win.  And this same desire to win is now being played out in Alabama among evangelicals supportin...

Every year it happens.  Certain members of the media proclaim there's a "war on Christmas" waged by the cultural elite, a war in which Christians are oppressed because we've moved from saying "Merry Christmas" to "Happy holidays" at the check-out line. I wish it were only that simple. First, let's be honest here.  What we're talking about are actually two different holidays . The Christian tradition has long observed and celebrated Jesus' birth.  It's the day we remember that the heavenly King wasn't born into opulence in a mighty castle, but in an old barn to a mother, who just months before, was an unwed pregnant teen.  The day begins a twelve-day long period of celebration in which Christians proclaim that God has stooped to our level, to begin to set the world aright.  That sin will no longer have dominion.  That death will be defeated.  And that all the powers of hell will be vanquished by the Conquering One.  This ...

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

John Pavlovitz' A Bigger Table:  Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community is a clarion call for Christians to embrace the courage and patience necessary to live in a community that embraces "a bigger table".  Radical hospitality, total authenticity, true diversity and agenda-free community are the author's indications of a faith-filled community of believers that truly strives to welcome all.  Part auto-biography and part story-telling strategy, A Bigger Table offers a hopeful way forward for any faith community's welcome that embraces their faith while remaining open to the wider culture. Part One is a first-hand account of Pavlovitz's own spiritual journey discerning his own vocation for ministry.  This vocation includes Pavlovitz' work to reconcile grace and acceptance for family and friends who were gay, who questioned traditional evangelical faith, and who sought interfaith dialogue.  Deep discomfort with a perspective that ...

Jodie Berndt's Praying the Scriptures for Your Adult Children: Trusting God with the Ones You Love provides prayers on twenty different topics to pray over our grown children and the unique circumstances that mark their various seasons of life, but she also includes true life testimonies from parents who have faced, prayed over, and seen God work in their own adult children's lives. These testimonies provide a witness that the practices and prayers in Berndt's new book help parents to continue their spiritual support long after their children become adults.  They cover such a variety of topics -- relationships (friends & marriage), milestones such as jobs, finding a place to live, and having their own children, health, safety, well-being and victory over temptations -- that the book becomes an invaluable resource for years to come. ___________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

Larry Duggins' Together:  Community as a Means of Grace is a deceptively small book packed with so much wisdom for the contemporary Church.  Duggins suggests that the church recover something of the New Testament Pauline model by facilitating missional "communities" -- making space on church property and within church life for Christian and non-Christian people to come together for work, play and fellowship. The idea for this slender volume came from a discussion between Duggins, Brett Wells, and Elaine Heath == all veterans of the Missional Wisdom Foundation (MWF), a network of intentional communities formed by the Wesleyan tradition -- over Matthew 18.20:  "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I’m there with them".  Could it be that Jesus is present whenever any two or three are gathered, they asked, even if the gathering is not explicitly "in the name" of Jesus?  If so, then Christians' priority should be getting people tog...

Rebecca Lindenbach's Why I Didn't Rebel:  A Twenty-Two Year Old Explains Why She Stayed on the Straight and Narrow and How Your Kids Can Too explains how to parent so effectively that readers' children won't rebel.  Lindenbach, 22, is married without children; rather than speaking from a parental perspective, she explains how she endured adolescence, with all of its intense inner questioning and hormonal shifts, without defying her parents' authority. A former homeschool student who proclaims that she is strong-willed and opinionated enough to take on the youth leadership in her church, Lindenbach attempts to assure readers that, despite her age, she understood the wisdom behind submitting to her parents.  She details many of her childhood antics and how her mother and father dealt with each in loving yet firm ways.  Lindenbach is nothing if not sincere and passionate, but readers will likely be skeptical about her parenting advice on issues such as h...

It's been ten years since I first read Benjamin Nugent's American Nerd:  The Story of My People .  But it's an amazing little book precisely for its way of making so many surprising cultural connections -- from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein , to nativism, to the use and abuse of Morse code -- in order to explain the rise of "nerd" class in the 20th century.  And as Nugen's subtitle suggests, he has a vested interest in telling the story straight:  "It was no coincidence, I think, that we generally came to D&D from home lives that tended toward the unpredictable and confounding ...  In the fantasies we made together, you weren't always king, but you could always point to him".  American Nerd is one of those books I want to return to from time to time, to think fresh, about how we got here.  It's funny and entertaining, to be sure, but it's also absorbing and enlightening.  But that's hardly a surprise when you consider its ...