“When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said […]

If I had one theme I could preach until the day I die it would be grace. Grace sneaks its way into almost every sermon I've ever written, probably because the longer I live, the more I understand how desperately I need grace. I disappoint myself and others far too often to not believe in […]

It's a late summer day, the air is sweltering, silent, still -- but you take your almost-one-year-old puppy for a walk anyway, for she is a tad stir-crazy due to the rain. Nothing much happens on your walk. You're a little bored. Blah, blah, blah, just another day. Yet, when you walk back up your […]

Hope sits in my kitchen; a sturdy farm table, confident that even with all her dings, dents and defects, joy might get served for breakfast. Laughable? Yes. Yet when loneliness fills my bowl, when uncertainty cascades into my cobalt blue cup, when life serves dashed dreams on my best dishes, I pull up a chair, […]

If you know me, you know I love to laugh. I love to be around people who make me laugh, and I love to be the one who makes other people laugh. I have always felt a bit sacrilegious about this. I mean, laughter feels like the opposite of what you were supposed to do […]

This is a repost from last summer! For my early morning swimming//pool-walking fools! *** For mid-July, it was a cold morning. Gray clouds hovered over the pool and the summer breeze was brisk and chilly. And yet we gathered to swim. All shapes and sizes, ages and demographics. Some obviously athletic, others barely able to […]