Month: June 2018
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Who is This ‘We’?: Poetry for the ‘Families Belong Together’ Rally
I’m not going to make the ‘Families Belong Together’ Rally in Onancock today (Saturday, June 30) from 11-12:30. And when asked for a statement, I couldn’t find the words. So I contributed this poem to be read. May we find the ‘we’ that is truly ‘us.’ Who is this ‘we’ into which I am enlisted?…
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No One’s Anything: A Reflection on Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens for a Reason
Peter Surran, is a pastor, teacher, EMT, building inspector, and a good friend. He’s also a heck of a writer. I’ve been wanting to get him on the blog for awhile and finally roped him in with a review of Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens For a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved. Enjoy: I bustled into my…
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Why We Don’t Care About ‘The National Water Situation’
“For all my love of rivers, ‘our nation’s rivers’ have not moved me once. The rivers that move me are those I’ve fished, canoed, slept beside, lived on, nearly drowned in, dreamed about, sipped tea and wine by, taught my kids to swim in, pulled a thousand fish from, fought and fought to defend. I’ve…
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Everyday Apocalypse: Poetry
Katherine Sonderegger is right when she says: It is a wonder that Moses is not annihilated—consumed—by the Name uttered to him in the wilderness. For all the other apocalypses in Holy Scripture can only pale before this Naming, the annihilating Speech of God as Subject. This is the end, the finality of all creatures, of…
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Jeff Sessions and the Things Church Trials Can’t Do
Church trials don’t create community; they create tribes. And that’s got me concerned for The United Methodist Church. Some 640 United Methodists recently lodged a formal complaint against the Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions, who is a United Methodist with membership in a Mobile, Alabama church. Though it is almost so rare…
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A Quick Reminder of Why Wesley Still Matters
John Wesley has been claimed by so many different heirs and used to so many and varied ends that it is refreshing to have someone like Hal Knight come along and point us back to the source. John Wesley: Optimist of Grace, his new entry in the Cascade Companions series designed for nonspecialist readers, comes…
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Letter to My Haitian Neighbor As You Leave Town
I saw you yesterday pulling on a frayed nylon cord to tie down the mattresses on the roof of your car. You’re leaving town and we never got to say ‘hello.’ I’ve seen you in the Food Lion and the Wal-mart and I’ve been tempted to try to speak. But my high school French, which…
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Trusting God (or What To Do When You’re Just Not Feeling It)
There are mornings when I’m just not feeling it. During my prayer time, as I review the plan for the day, I say to God, (out loud sometimes), “Remind me again, why me?” Those are the days I write it out. I turn to a fresh page in my journal and continue the conversation. For…
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Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor: Yossi Klein Halevi’s Call Across the Wall
I don’t talk much on this blog about Palestine and Israel, even though you’ll see a link here to my 2014 book, A Space for Peace in the Holy Land: Listening to Modern Israel and Palestine. That’s partly due to the fact that the commitment of this site is to understanding rural life and ministry,…
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Jarena Lee and the Day the Preacher Stumbled: Exhortation and the Methodist Future
The preacher was in trouble. It’s hard to take the life out of the story of Jonah, but somehow he had. Struggling preachers are not unusual. We’ve all had a Sunday. Or several. But in early 19th-century Methodism, including the AME branch of Methodism, (of which this preacher was a part), the official preachers had…
Heartlands 