romans on Impermanence

I saw a live podcast a few weeks ago, and the host, actor Dax Shepherd, gave the audience a couple minutes to ask questions. One young woman in the front row asked him, “How do you get through the har...

Lamenting a Living Son This is God’s own lament: a brokenhearted father mourning the loss of a still-living son.  Throughout the book, God has led Hosea to draw from moments of Israel’s past.  Here, ...

Preaching Commentary Lamenting a Living Son This is God’s own lament: a brokenhearted father mourning the loss of a still-living son.  Throughout the book, God has led Hosea to draw from moments of...

Ilka Chase (1903-1978) was a celebrated American Actress who performed on stage, in television and radio, and several films, including Fast and Loose (1930) and Oceans 11 (the original, in 1960). In h...

The Cave One of the most famous passages in Plato's Republic is his "Allegory of the Cave," which is found at the beginning of book seven . Socrates imagines the human condition al...

There is nothing permanent except change.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

The mystery of perfection as an aspect of beauty is its transcendence. It points to a glory beyond itself. I knew that when I held my children, I didn’t simply cradle flesh and blood. I held a living ...

Change is the only constant in life.

The immortal Spirit . . . is forever tugging us toward him.

Reality is what doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it.

We all live between two worlds. We are planted here on earth while our hope is in heaven. We are given work to do in temporary soil that, we’re told, has the potential to spring up into unending fruit...

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

If we acknowledge that our inclination to sin is part of our natures, and that we will never wholly eradicate it, there is at least something for us to do in our lives that will not in the end seem ju...

At the beginning of this season of Lent, on this Ash Wednesday, we are reminded that we are dust and to dust we will return. We are reminded of human fragility and failure. We are reminded that we are...

When one has once fully entered the realm of Love, the world—no matter how imperfect—becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for Love.

We know but little now about the conditions of the life that is to come. But what is certain is that Love must last. God, the Eternal God, is Love. Covet, therefore, that everlasting gift.

Death is not an eventuality that with luck, waits for another day. It is today’s cup from which God now insists you drink. If you think that somehow you can choose today not to carry the deaths of you...

[The decay of Logic results from an] untroubled assumption that the particular is real and the universal is not.

He who abides always in a present now, in him doth God beget His Son without ceasing.

To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we...

All day long, all of us are framing and reframing our lives. We talk about the memory of our adorable but sexist grandpa. We label ourselves as movie critics or introverts or justice-lovers. We say th...

The kingdom is present not in grandiose accomplishments, but in showing practical love in humble ways, day after day, and in refusing to allow our failures and disappointments to hide God’s love from ...

Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.

Our culture is afraid of grief, but not just because it is afraid of death. That is natural and normal, a proper reaction to the Last Enemy. Our culture is afraid because it seems to be afraid of the ...

We come into this world blissfully unaware of these fragile, beautiful things we call our bodies. In our mother’s womb, we bathe in continuous warmth and nourishment, changing shadows and muffled voic...

One of the stunning realities of the Christian life is that in a world where everything is in some state of decay, God’s mercies never grow old. They never run out. They never are ill timed. They neve...

For a long time it seemed to me that real life was about to begin, but there was always some obstacle in the way. Something had to be got through first, some unfinished business; time still to be serv...

Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness.