It’s hard for a child to have to go to bed in the middle of an evening when the rest of the family is still celebrating. Nobody wants to go to bed while everyone else is still up. No one wants to miss out on life. Remember how as a child, tired and unable to…
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said something to the effect that we reach moral maturity on the day we realise that, ultimately, we have to choose: genuflect before something higher than ourselves or begin to self-destruct! Simone Weil had a similar idea. She consistently affirmed that our deepest longing was to find someone or something…
“They shall look upon the one whom they have pierced!” A phrase that names the voice that’s left behind on Good Friday. In 1981, an anonymous, young girl was brutally raped and murdered by the military at an obscure location in El Salvador, fittingly called La Cruz (the Cross). Her story was reported by a…
According to the Bible, there’s a secret that’s hidden from the amoral, known only by the virtuous. The Book of Wisdom tells us that when we are not virtuous “we do not know the hidden counsels of God, nor do we grasp the recompense of holiness, nor discern the innocent soul’s reward.” How true! How…
Forty years ago, Philip Rieff wrote a book entitled The Triumph of the Therapeutic. In essence, he argued that today in the Western world so many people need psychological therapy mainly because our family structure has grown weak and many community structures have broken down. He contends that in societies where there are still strong…
When did we lose it? When did we lose that deeply-engrained, forever-sanctioned sense that however much we might disagree with each other or even dislike each other, we still need to accord each other basic courtesy, respect, and politeness? We’ve lost that, at least for the most part. From the highest levels of government to…
We enter the season of Lent by putting ashes on our foreheads. What’s symbolised here? Perhaps the heart understands better than the head because more people go to church on Ash Wednesday than on any other day of the year, including Christmas. The queues to receive the ashes in many churches are endless. Why? Why…
In his farewell speech in John’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that he is going away but that he will leave us a parting gift, the gift of his peace, and that we will experience this gift in the spirit he leaves behind. How does this work? How do we leave peace and a spirit behind…
For 15 years, I taught a course entitled The Theology of God. The students in that course were predominately seminarians preparing for ministry, along with a number of lay students who were preparing to serve as ministers in various capacities in their churches. I would always teach what the curriculum called for: the key biblical…
Sometimes it takes an outsider to help you to see the beauty and depth of something you have never fully appreciated. I suspect this true for many of us, myself no exception, regarding the celebration of the Eucharist in our churches. David P. Gushee, an Evangelical, recently published a book entitled After Evangelicalism, within which…