5 Tips for Facing Our Fears
Early this morning, I was just drifting off into the halcyon waters of deep sleep REM when my son woke me up to say he was scared. I was non-plussed on a third consecutive night of one or another or...
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Remembering Joyce and Little Things With Great Love
[A correction has been made to Joyce's age in this latest version of the post.] And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. —1 Corinthians 13:13 Right now my...
View ArticleWords on the 90th Birthday of a Dear Friend and Teacher
The longer I live, the more I'm learning the importance of celebrating the people whose lives have touched mine—not just after they die, but when they are still alive. "Emilia Pavlovna" (as she's been...
View ArticlePraying for Dead People?
And what the dead had no speech for, when living They can tell you, being dead: the communication Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond with the language of the living. —T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets...
View ArticleA Mother’s Day Tribute to Peggy Hight-Robb (a.k.a. “Grandmom Peggy”)
A few days ago my grandmother died. It's poignantly fitting that "Grandmom Peggy" made her exit from this life just before Mother's Day. She was after all a mother to six children. I only quite...
View ArticleDeathbed Wishes
Yesterday I visited a dying woman at the hospital. I do this sort of thing pretty regularly these days as a hospice chaplain. Her daughter was there, tearful but steady. She said her family was...
View ArticleLessons from the Valley of the Shadow of Death
Just over six months ago, a member of our congregation announced he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer: Steve Hayner, the outgoing president of Columbia Theological Seminary, and his wife...
View ArticleDying Stanford Neurosurgeon—On Heidegger, Graham Greene and Time
I'm finally emerging from hibernation on my latest book project, this one now definitively titled The Recovery-Friendly Church: Loving and Ministering to People with Addictions (InterVarsity Press) and...
View ArticleA Glorious Dark: A Review
Three years ago, when pastor, seminary professor and author A.J. Swoboda's first book Messy made its debut, I said I hoped the book would not be his last; so when a review copy of Swoboda's second...
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