BuddhistDruidChristianHumanist

(This is actually something I wrote for myself on a summer day a couple years ago.) I'm sitting in Clement Park thinking about sacred and profane geography and the thin space between them. I'm thinking about the words "consecrate" and "desecrate" and "homopoeticus" - humans that make meaning. We make the land sacred with our actions and we also remove the sacred from a place with our actions. And one person's consecrated space is another person's desecrated space. So, no space between them, one and the same. Two young people just stepped out of a car and there was a lightness in their step, a joy in their pace as they walked toward a hill and then ran over it. I suspect they are going to recall this park as a sacred place for them. For now. Several children are playing on the swings and slides, giggling and shouting with each other. Years from now, they might be off at college or starting a new job and some moment, maybe other chi...

According to my mother, my grandmother whom I called Nana, was obsessed with whether or not she would go to Heaven or Hell as her life came closer to its end. I’ll bet some of you had a Nana. Someone who cared for you when you were sick, ate the burnt pork chop while she served you the one that was perfectly cooked, went to church every Sunday, treated the people around her kindly. She wasn’t perfect. I’m sure she had her flaws. I’m sure I don’t know what they were. But at the end of her life, she was consumed by fear that she wasn’t good enough. Not good enough for Heaven… so, bad enough for Hell. “No truly accomplished New Testament scholar, for instance, believes that later Christianity’s opulent mythology of God’s eternal torture chamber is clearly present in the scriptural texts. It’s entirely absent from St. Paul’s writings; the only eschatological fire he ever mentions brings salvation to those whom it tries (1 Corinthians 3:15). Neither is it found in the other New Testamen...

I hesitate to write this because, first and foremost, I want people to take the time to prepare a medical directive for their loved ones. So, let me say first, get a copy of the Five Wishes OR meet with an attorney to write out your directions in a Living Will. (Don't do both as far as the Medical Directives are concerned because they can supercede each other.) This is a great kindness you can do for your loved ones when they are brought into a hospital conference room and asked, “Do you know what XXX would want done at this stage in her life?” And do this now. Whether you are 23 or 83, there is no time at which it is too soon. There is only the time when it is too late. So, that said, I want to share something about medical directives that partly comes from my most immediate experience and partly from my experience as a chaplain. My mother had some medical directives before she died. And she had shared what her wishes were with all of her children. So, we knew that she wanted t...

I will admit that when someone tells me that they have read the whole Bible from front to back, I’m almost always skeptical. It is not that I automatically doubt every person’s integrity. It is that they almost always have a “tell,” the signal that gamblers look for when their opponent is bluffing. In this case, the tell is that they will say that they have read the Bible from front to back but then make no commentary on the crashingly boring parts, like the Book of Numbers. That book is almost literally what it is called, a book of Numbers. It is like reading an actuarial journal. Or even the genealogy in the Book of Matthew which isn’t nearly as long but still tedious. Or the violence in the Book of Joshua. Not so boring but startling in its violence that a reader is likely to note. Reading the Bible from front to back is challenging not just for its shear length but also because it requires perseverance when you get to the Book of Numbers. There are also places where the narrative...