John

I know what Jesus is doing in this story; I have three small children. He's dawdling.

I know what Jesus is doing in this story; I have three small children. He's dawdling.

I have given my father many presents. The small bottle of fragrant bath essence I gave him last Christmas may be the most important one.

I have given my father many presents. The small bottle of fragrant bath essence I gave him last Christmas may be the most important one.

I have given my father many presents. The small bottle of fragrant bath essence I gave him last Christmas may be the most important one.

No one from the outside can fully grasp the inner workings of any marriage. Even those inside sometimes find themselves lonely and strangers.

A triptych for Thomas G. Long

I was not raised in the Mennonite church; I came to it later in life. It was primarily the commitment to nonviolence that drew me in, though I soon learned that there is more to like about being a Mennonite than that.

One of the things I admire about Mennonites is their respect for history.

I wonder if Nicodemus knows what he’s getting into. What draws him to Jesus? What motivates any of us to come to Jesus?

I often think I hear colleagues asking, “How could we attract nuns to our church?” Actually they’re talking about “the nones,” of course. One of the clearest findings of the Pew Forum’s new religious landscape study is that fewer and fewer people have any religious affiliation at all. Catholics and mainline Protestants show the biggest drop. 

I feel pretty conflicted about all of this.

Did you ever make a Möbius strip in grade school or high school? You may have seen one in the woodcuts of M.C. Escher. They are made by taking a strip of paper, say, eight inches long and an inch wide. You hold the two ends, give one a half-twist, then tape the two ends together to form a loop.

The Bible's images for God must be taken in an analogical sense. Yet the Bible exhibits no anxiety about using them.

The Bible's images for God must be taken in an analogical sense. Yet the Bible exhibits no anxiety about using them.

The Bible's images for God must be taken in an analogical sense. Yet the Bible exhibits no anxiety about using them.

An ancient definition of God says that God is an intelligible circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

When we were baptized, we were given a new name: Branch.

The more I read the beginning of John 15, the more I come to believe that it is about the Lord’s Supper.

Last year I took a class to determine my Enneagram number. I’m an old hand at Myers-Briggs, with its 16 types, but this nine-number circle with all sorts of arrows going back and forth was a new system for me. Thankfully the teacher, Suzanne Stabile, had a teaching style I understood well. It turns out we are the same type.

Some of us reside in the heart (or feeling) triad, as Suzanne and I do, and some in the head (or thinking) triad. My guess is Thomas would belong in the third triad.