On Knowing What to do in this Pandemic

Years ago, I was in the downtown Eastside of Vancouver, a very troubled corner of North America with some of the highest rates of homelessness and intravenous drug use. I was hanging out with an intentional community that had located themselves in this neighborhood as agents of grace and beauty and change. One night, I…

The World Just Shrunk

The world just got a whole lot smaller. Whether you live in Milan, Italy or Moline, Illinois; York, England or New York, New York; Johannesburg, California or Johannesburg, South Africa, we are all now sheltering in place and watching a pandemic sweep the globe. I don’t want to minimize the disparities here. One look at…

Plague: The Great Leveler

Experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic these last few weeks has reminded me of a section of my unpublished novel, Nocturn: The Ethiopian Orthodox. In it I describe the shift that occurs in a population as a disease moves from bubonic form, carried by fleas, to pneumonic form, carried through the air. In it the gap between…

What’s a guy like you doing in a religion like this?

Evangelicalism has degenerated in the US church. Why stay? https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZXhwZXJpZW50aWFsZGlzY2lwbGVzaGlwLmNvbS90aGUtYXJ0LW9mLXZlbm4_Zm9ybWF0PXJzcw&episode=NWI2ZGU5YjdlYzRlYjcwOGM0MDgxZTA4OjVkMGQ5ZWVkN2FlZTQ3MDAwMTU3NTNiZTo1ZTY3YmNiZTc4NDU2MjBkNTY3ZmE3NmU&ved=0CAIQkfYCahcKEwiI4MazypDoAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&hl=en

What the Hell?

I chose into the Christian faith as an adult – well almost. I was 17. Even though I’d been born into a Christian family and had held a genuine fascination with Jesus since childhood, I didn’t actively chose into the faith until the first week or so of my freshman year at Iowa State University.…