A Laredo pastor and his family are hard at work helping others, on both sides of the border.
What an open door to asylum seekers looks like
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Why we need the grime of Ash Wednesday
Like the sludge on a car in the winter, most of our messes accumulate gradually.
The truth about testimonies
As a child, I testified every Sunday morning. I can’t do it anymore.
Loving your political enemy at the National Prayer Breakfast
Arthur Brooks gave the room an important assignment. President Trump turned it down.
Feet Essays by readers
We gave our readers a one-word writing prompt: “Feet.”
Brian Doyle s rivers of words
A new collection of Doyle’s nonfiction overflows with wonder.
What Meghan and Harry can and can’t escape
At the heart of life is the mess of being stuck with other people.
A visit to the Hava NaGrilla Smoke BBQ Festival in Philadelphia
Hope smells like barbecue.
When we advertise our righteousness it becomes self righteousness
Three weeks before Lent begins each year, the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9–14). For Orthodox Christians, this parable, in which a Pharisee confidently reports on his virtues and a tax collector humbly asks God for mercy, tees off a pre-Lenten season focused on humility and repentance.
February 23 Transfiguration A Matthew 17 1 9
I haven’t stopped thinking about an essay I read 15 years ago when I was in seminary. My pastoral life has been a decadelong conversation with Peter Dula’s “Fugitive Ecclesia,” a chapter from his dissertation that he later published in his book Cavell, Companionship, and Christian Theology. The theologians who occupied my attention at the time, Dula pointed out, were quick to travel to other times and places in order to talk about the church, in their search for faithfulness.