As Wycliffe College Chaplain, I spend a lot of time creating lists. I consider doing so a critical part of any pastoral practice.

A friend told me she once preached about discipleship. After the service, a parishioner came up to her and said, irately, “I am not a disciple. I am a member.” Oh well, I guess it was better than no reaction at all, and certainly better than, “Lovely sermon.”

There’s a growing ache at the heart of many of our western societies. Its name is loneliness. And a stream of actors has been calling it out of late: psychologists, pastors, pandemistas, even politicians.

I do not consider myself “a person of faith.” There, I said it. Are you shocked? 

Yes, I attend my parish church regularly. I say the creed without crossing my fingers. I renew my baptismal vows at least once a year. So what could it possibly mean to say I am not “a person of faith”?

I remember seminary students who were hoping to be ordained warning one another of the kind of questions they were likely to be asked in the selection process. “It used to be,” they said, “that you had to say something about the importance of the sacraments.

On this day the Lord has acted. We will rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118:24)

“Stuck at home”

stuck: “mired, glued, compelled, resolutely adhered, halted, saddled disagreeably”

home: “one’s place of residence, domicile, habitat”

How very good and pleasant it is

I am in the middle of reading St. Benedict’s Rule with my 30 students in the first year MDiv course at Wycliffe called, “Life Together: Living the Christian Faith in Community.” We have come to the fun part of this portion of the class.

We’ve all had enough, it seems. And yet we only want more. Shoulders curled forward, phones in our hands, eyes fixed to the screen, our brains wired to thumb endlessly deeper into the digital matrix: this is becoming the posture of humanity.