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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… →
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The Writing Life–It Came for Me: Poetry
On visiting Hunterdale with kin long after Grandma died: It was pathetic to look at– Grandma’s glorious garden overgrown with grass. Her long back yard littered with automotive and boat wrecks. The scuppernong vines half the size they were back when. Still, amidst the mess, I could make out the spot where I first knew… →
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Normal is How America Got This Way: A Review of The View from Flyover Country
“The absence of complaining should be taken as a sign that something is rotting in a society,” Sarah Kendzior says. “Complaining is beautiful. Complaining should be encouraged. Complaining means you have a chance.” (225) Sometimes it takes a critic to get things to change, and Kendzior is such a critic. Her book, The View from… →
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Han Solo and the Myth of the Heroic Leader
There’s no doubt that a charismatic leader can have a big impact on the size of a congregation. It’s what most churches ask for when I go around doing consultations about the missional needs of the congregation as they prepare for a new pastoral appointment. “If we had somebody who would knock on doors and… →
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Come Write at The Porches with Alex
Do you like where Heartlands goes–exploring the places that make the world rich and miraculous? Would you like to develop that sense of place in your own writing? Then why not come to the first Heartlands writing weekend? Located at The Porches Writing Retreat, in beautiful, secluded Norwood, Virginia–a site featured in a 2017 Heartlands… →
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Musicals, Monuments, and Historical Optimism: The Ed Ayers Interview concludes
Is there reason, as a historian, to be an optimist? Edward Ayers, among other things the co-host of the BackStory podcast and radio program, narrates a troubled chapter of American history in his latest book, The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America. In the first two segments… →
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