parenting is hard
helpless, powerless, but filled with hope
Over this Christmas break, I had a stark realization: parenting is hard.
This Christmas was unlike any other we have celebrated as a family. Our youngest, adopted from Ethiopia after over a year of abuse in a state-run orphanage, is currently living in a therapeutic foster home because of nearly four years of violence against the . . .
Wendell Berry on miracles
The miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine – . . .
T.S. Eliot on a difficult faith
You will never attract the young by making Christianity easy; but a good many can be attracted by finding it difficult: difficult both to the disorderly mind and to the unruly passions.
— T.S. Eliot
This quote showed up in my today, courtesy of The Plough daily dig email. Immediately I was struck by how . . .
messenger of death, messenger of hope
thoughts on the Galveston Apache helicopter crash
The Secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deep regret that your husband was killed today in a routine training accident. The Secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family in your tragic loss.
Same script as usual, except today I’m supporting my brethren in the Army, so there’s a one word . . .
Posted in: chaplaincy
on being mistaken for Christ
thoughts on Holy Innocents' day
We live in a fallen world where injustice, calamity, and horrors are too frequent and too real. Spending just a few moments reading the news quickly reminds us of these truths. At first blush, it would be easy to consider the slaughter of the Holy Innocents who gave their lives as just one more example of the brokenness of our world, and as . . .
Posted in: theology
"the man who cries out against evil men..."
The man who cries out against evil men but does not pray for them will never know the grace of God.
--St. Silouan the Athonite
on a radically simple Christmas
Jesus observed, “Without me you can do nothing.” Yet we act, for the most part, as though without us God can do nothing.…“Oh, but nothing will get done,” you say. “If I don’t do it, Christmas won’t happen.” And we crowd out Christ with our fretful fears.
God asks us to give away everything of ourselves. The gift of greatest efficacy . . .
