It All Started in the Garden

Is There Anything “New” under the Sun?—Part II

2 Comments / It All Started in the Garden, PCUSA, Sermon on the Mount, Spiritual Disciplines, The Missional Church, Theological Reflection / By /

Yesterday we considered the human drive toward newness. The writer of Ecclesiastes helped us to see that “under the sun,” that is, in the realm of purely human experience, there is nothing really new. People think they’ve found something new to entertain, feed an addiction, or eat; but chances are pretty good that even a primitive form of that thing has been around for a very long time. To this restless searching, God—through the voice of Isaiah—asks the pertinent question: Why do we waste our money on stuff that does not satisfy (53:2)? God implanted in human DNA a yearning […]

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Is There Anything “New” under the Sun?—Part I

6 Comments / Death & Dying, It All Started in the Garden, PCUSA, Spiritual Disciplines, Teaching, Theological Reflection / By /

[Got sidetracked yesterday, first with Jury Duty and then with the Giants-Pirates wildcard match-up last night. Okay, I am back in focus!] In my last post, I suggested that just because something is new or experimental, it does not necessarily follow that it is good or orthodox. The catalyst for my comments was an “outside the box” worship service conducted during the last meeting of San Francisco Presbytery.  It makes sense now to explore whether the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and other historic mainline denominations have fallen off the deep end in their efforts to try something new. The motivation, it

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Happy Birthday to Me!

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Today is my birthday, and given the bout with the Beast this past year, one worth celebrating with gusto! We are having a few friends over to share dinner and birthday cake, and if family tradition prevails, I am entitled to special treatment all day. Actually, maybe all week—we try to stretch our luck as far as we can. Last year at this time, our kids were putting on for us a joint celebration of our milestone 60th birthday. Relatives and friends came from all over and made us feel very loved, putting us at the center of attention. Those

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The Seventh Mansion: Union with the Trinity

5 Comments / It All Started in the Garden, Lent, Lung Cancer, Personal, Romans 8, Spiritual Progress through the Interior Castle, Uncategorized / By /

When I first read Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle as a seminary student, I got about half-way through it. She was writing about experiences I had never had and using terms I could not comprehend. Her ardor was unimaginable to me, so I put it aside and wrote an honest book report (Help! I have no idea what this woman is talking about!). I have not picked it up since, but am very grateful for Thomas Ashbrook’s unpacking in Mansions of the Heart, upon which this blog series has been based. His accessible tour of the castle and its mansions

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The “Come to Jesus” Moment

6 Comments / It All Started in the Garden, Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, The Pastoral Call / By /

I wonder sometimes if the slow-motion Christian discipleship I am undergoing as a cancer patient is giving me the opportunity to revisit issues, temptations, and misdirections of my past life as a pastor. Today the theme is fatigue, felt persistently now for weeks. It seems the effects of chemo and radiation sneak up on a person well after the treatment period is over. For me, what I had imagined would be almost six weeks of steady strengthening has turned out instead to be a disappointing holding pattern. Last week I had a short-term set back in the form of “the

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Fading Glory

9 Comments / It All Started in the Garden, Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, PCUSA, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

Two weeks ago today I had my last chemotherapy infusion for Round 3. By all accounts, my recovery from its negative effects has been unusually quick and thorough, much more so than Round 2. I am hiking at least two miles a day now to build up my strength and to regain cardio-pulmonary endurance for surgery March 3. God has been very good to squash any queasiness or sleepiness I had in previous rounds, and it is nice to say life is getting back to normal. The drugs continue to create an extremely inhospitable environment for the Beast in my

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Prepare to Die—Part III

Leave a Comment / Death & Dying, It All Started in the Garden, Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

For the last several days, we have been considering the process of dying and death itself, trying to push through our denial of our mortality. I have been enriched by your comments and candid reflections on the topic, realizing January is a busy month and death is probably not your first-choice topic! Yesterday was an amazing day for me, with death absolutely not on my radar screen. After a lousy weekend, I was feeling so good by yesterday, I spent virtually the entire day on the phone, doing “work”! I even had energy left to go to our small group

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From This Life to the Next

6 Comments / Death & Dying, It All Started in the Garden, Lung Cancer, PCUSA, Theological Reflection / By /

Yesterday’s post relied heavily on Tom Wright’s formulation of what happens when we die. In an attempt to gather all the data, he has come to the tentative conclusion (not having been there himself) that our entry into eternal life happens in stages, and that “eternity” itself—existence outside the parameters of time—actually doesn’t start until Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead. In other words, life after death involves waiting. Mind you, one is waiting in a “good place,” paradise, but the culmination of God’s cosmic history is still in the making. This period of waiting

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Dying and Death Is a Transition

4 Comments / Death & Dying, It All Started in the Garden, Lung Cancer, Theological Reflection, Uncategorized / By /

In my contemplation of death, my own and yours—both happening some time in the future, today or decades from now—I have been grappling with the question of why it is hard to die, and we will come back to this in a day or two. We struggle through a process of grief, starting with denial of death itself. Today, I’d like to examine what we have been trying to avoid our whole lives, what is going on when we die. The topic is huge, so I start today with biblical input and some interpretation from N. T. Wright. Tomorrow, we’ll

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Denial of Death Gets Us Nowhere

5 Comments / Death & Dying, It All Started in the Garden, Lung Cancer, Personal, Theological Reflection / By /

Ernest Becker wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book call The Denial of Death in 1973. I was required to read it in seminary, and its basic message has stuck with me all these years. I am re-reading it now, and finding it more accessible than ever, given my current lung cancer situation. His basic thesis is that all humans have in common a fear of death, and that controlling this anxiety is one of the most powerful motivators of human behavior. This fear is so terrifying that people “conspire to keep it unconscious,” and replace it with conscious, persistent efforts

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