The Little Friar

Hand in hand we walk together, God's grace warms us from above. It's him I thank each day I wake for blessing me with all your love. The sunshine in my morning and the bird that sings my song. In this life when I am troubled it's you who keeps me strong. The wind beneath my wings as this eagle takes to flight. You brighten up my sky in the darkness of the night. The reason of my universe and the air that gives me life. My truest friend of all ... my heart, my soul, my wife. -- For Kendra

Kendra and I have known one another for nearly ten years.  Of that time, we've been married nearly two years.  We've had challenging moments to our relationship -- as does any relationship (and especially one that has someone who is on the Autism spectrum) -- but I've learned more about myself in the process.  And so has Kendra.  I suppose these eight reasons are really more an ode to the respect and understanding, care and commitment, that make our love possible than it is an ode to her.  That said, the eight reasons being married to my wife rocks: 1.  She knows my moods better than I do. As an autistic man, trust me when I say, sometimes I'm clueless about how others feel -- even myself.  But Kendra can detect my moods from a mile away.  And she seems to know exactly what I need.  Whether it's a hug or a few minutes of quiet away from the loud crowd -- I take comfort knowing that Kendra is the one person I trust enough to care for me...

For my wife, Kendra She is beautiful,          and not like those girls in magazines.  She is beautiful          in the way she thinks.  She is beautiful          for that sparkle in her eye,     when she's talking about things she cares about.  She is beautiful          for her ability to make others smile      with jokes that might make others blush.  No, she's not beautiful based on something       as temporary as looks.  She is beautiful in a way that you know      her beauty will last.  She is beautiful, deep down in her soul. 

Cinderella Ate My Daughter  is one of my favorite books of cultural and sexual criticism.  In it,  Peggy Orenstein laments how our culture naturally moves from such beauty-centered innocence as to such beauty-centered sluttiness as Take the phrase, sleeping around .  It's sounds innocent enough.  But the reality is something stark.  To quote someone from college, that time of life when sexual partners often number in the double-digits for men and women, "I cannot recall ever rejecting an advance, and I know I never felt good afterward.  On the contrary, I felt used and dirty, at once manipulative and manipulated.  I hated my reputation; I hated the sex".   It bothers me to see women objectified in this way.   Any  woman.  I've discovered over the years that most men don't get it -- this notion of objectification .  It was explained easily enough to me as a seven-year-old:  Only treat women as you would your Grandmothe...

Bonhoeffer's sermon on marriage is a particularly beautiful selection that requires folks to think theologically  about Christian  marriage.  This morning -- as I head into two marriages in as many weeks (and one of them, my own!) -- I begin reflecting on what it means to talk about Christian marriage. Of course, it's easy to respond with trite, romantic concepts that reflect the culture more than they do my faith.  That's the one thing I want to avoid.  Instead, I want to offer a fresh reading of the NT that refocuses marriage away from the "order of creation" theme that Bonhoeffer used in his Ethics  and toward the biblical notion of grace.  In other words, I want to ground marriage in Jesus, not in nature.  Covenant, not in procreation.   And I want to begin in an odd place:  We  Christians need to recover our identity as  Gentiles.   This is important for a few different reasons.  First, this recovery ...

There have been many nights over the past thirteen years when I've turned to the book of Psalms to express what's otherwise been expressible.   I have an observation about dealing with suffering, pain, disappointment:  Some people like to "go high" while others "go low".  I'm part of that "go low" crowd.  Walter Brueggemann groups the Psalms under the headings psalms of orientation and psalms of disorientation .  Psalms of orientation are the psalms of unmitigated praise.  YHWH reigns supreme in these psalms and the world is well-ordered.  By contrast, the psalms of disorientation are the psalms of protest and lament where YHWH has gone missing and the world seems to be falling apart.   Folks who "go high" generally use the psalms of orientation.  Folks who "go low", psalms of disorientation.  So, I gravitate toward psalms of lament.  It seems lots of folks  go to the psalms of orientation -- psalms of praise which declar...