The real tragedy is that we see people as entities or merely as things. Too seldom do we see people in their true humanness. A spiritual myopia limits our vision to external accidents. We see men as Jews or Gentiles, Catholics or Protestants, Chinese or American,...
You are not what you do, although you do a lot. You are not what you have collected in terms of friendships and connections, although you might have many. You are not the popularity that you have received. You are not the success of your work. You are not what people...
Unless we are exchanging deeply committed levels of love with a few people, we will die slowly on the inside. This is precisely why so many people feel almost nothing at all. If we don’t learn to exchange love with family and friends, we will eventually grow numb and...
In my own conversations with Christians, I find that almost all of them talk approvingly about love for others, some talk confidently about God’s love for us, but few are willing to talk about their love for God… They judge that it is wrong not to love people, but...
When we think of loss we think of the loss, through death, of people we love. But loss is a far more encompassing theme in our life. For we lose not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. from Necessary...
When someone insists that we should only use the best music in worship, I scratch my head. Is the best music simple or complex? Written or spontaneous? Short or long? Do they mean the best aesthetically, pragmatically, emotionally, or historically? We usually have in...
The problem with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead.
Pentecost is Babel turned right side up: all speech is unified because it is God, no longer people, who is building toward the heavens. The story of Pentecost goes further than its historical reality. It is also a parable that urges us into the knowledge that the...
I hope we do not come to the liturgy as spectators, nor for entertainment or even refreshment, though on occasion it will no doubt provide us amply with both. Rather liturgy should be the simple and powerful effort of people in the midst of life to keep festival in...
Worship is a conversation between the God of revelation and people in need of redemption.