The Annunciation

January 2, 2024.Reading time 9 minutes.

SECTION TWO OF WH AUDEN’S “FOR THE TIME BEING” (FTTB) (for section one, click here)Auden locates the Annunciation in “The Garden,” which we seem led to believe is Garden of Eden. In that Garden, each of the four Jungian “Faculties” — Sensation, Feeling, Intuition, and Thought— get a chance to speak. As a licensed administrator […]

Advent

December 26, 2023.Reading time 10 minutes.

SECTION ONE OF WH AUDEN’S “FOR THE TIME BEING” (FTTB) Advent is the season we have just finished —the season the Consumerist Cultural Christmas calls “The Christmas Season.” But, the Christmas season starts on Christmas Day and, like that earworm torture of a song, it does indeed run for twelve days. But to counter that […]

Calm is a Form of Resistance

December 22, 2023.Reading time 12 minutes.

“Silent night, Holy night…all is calm, all is bright.” Just days from now —and like Christians all around the globe— we’ll sing these words on Christmas Eve. We’ll light our candles, hold them high, and experience a brief, blissful moment of “calm.” There is something in this ending to Christmas Eve worship that always calms […]

Incarnational Seeing:

December 13, 2023.Reading time 10 minutes.

The Sunday before Advent starts, we actually get a pretty good reminder of the power of Incarnational Seeing. Incarnational seeing is my language for what others call the spiritual practice of “paying attention.” There is a lot of buzz in the culture right now around the concept of “mindfulness” as a tool for reducing stress […]

Same Old Lang Syne (Fogelberg cover)

December 12, 2023.Reading time 7 minutes.

“Die Hard” is to Christmas movies, what this song is to Christmas music. Listeners will no doubt forever debate whether it is, or is not, a Christmas song. One thing is clear: It definitely creeps into playlists this time of year. Over the past few months, I been learning it on guitar (because that’s my […]

Christmas, Star Wars, and Greg Abbott

December 26, 2022.Reading time 12 minutes.

This week, as I reread the first verses of Luke’s Christmas story, I thought about Rey (from Star Wars), and about my own governor, Greg Abbott. Director JJ Abrams masterfully introduces the character of Rey to us in “The Force Awakens” in a sequence that is worthy of a careful look. As John Williams’ brilliant […]

Christmas and Shit

December 25, 2022.Reading time 13 minutes.

It’s Christmas Day, and so it’s the perfect day to talk about shit. I’ve probably already lost some of you, because you don’t think preachers are supposed to use such words. But for those who aren’t already writing my Bishop (feel free) read along…. Artists can get away with such words better than preachers. That’s […]

The Tribe of Everybody Else

January 16, 2021.Reading time 24 minutes.

A Message To White America “Let me put it this way, there were a number of folks who got up on the floor and gave the same speech, you know that night…while there was a crime scene investigation and a dead woman’s blood drying just a few feet outside the door….they were giving the same […]

Christmas Message, 2018

December 24, 2018.Reading time 10 minutes.

One of the things I have always dearly loved about our East Dallas neighborhood is how it’s a beautiful and somewhat chaotic mix of all kinds of people living together in one place. It’s folks from all walks of life *choosing* to live next to those who are quite different from them. One minute, you’ll […]

In-CAR-Nation Talk with Me and Wes Magruder

December 20, 2018.Reading time less than 1 minute.

So, this happened… Wes Magruder invited me to be his guest on his “In-CAR-Nation Talk” show…a shameless rip off of both Jerry Seinfeld and James Cordon, where-in we drive around my East Dallas neighborhood, and talk Christmas and Incarnational Theology. It was pretty humorous and pretty fun, and we got to talk about one one […]