As the clock passes six in the morning, I anticipate the sound of little feet and a very loud voice entering my room. My son is a loud talker from 5:30 to 9:00 in the morning. I used to wonder why the volume and the intensity at these God forsaken hours only, but here’s what I have learned. Although...

  As with most things creepy and scary, it started with a scream. Not a cry for help, really. More like someone who had just seen a ghost. And then came a succession of loud and perplexing sounds; the reverberating thud of things being thrown aside and run over. When she was twenty-four years...

Richard “Dick” Brogan was a personal friend, and he was one of my heroes. Dick was a white Mississippi Baptist minister who worked tirelessly to build relationships between whites and blacks during segregation and even up until he passed away last year. Not so long ago, Dick was followed, harassed,...

And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. Matthew 18:5 God showed up on my doorstep early Sunday night. He stood outside the door for quite awhile, unsure whether to come in, or just run away. God had stringy, sweaty blond hair that surrounded her dirty, chubby, cherubic...

Life through a four year old’s eyes is so much more. More colorful. More emotional. More fantastic. My son has an obsession of late. Not pancakes or superheroes, but George Lucas’ world in the galactic Empire. Most of you know it as Star Wars. My wife has less hair from pulling and less breath...

Growing up in the Methodist Church, it seems we were regularly celebrating communion in new and different ways.  I appreciated the diversity in approach, as each new form somehow brought out a different aspect of the act of remembrance.  One form, however, I remember more for the laughter it produced,...

As the Blue Like Jazz team has screened the film for audiences across the country and across the spectrum of faith, one of the things that keeps coming up is the “appropriateness” of the film for high school age teens. The film’s PG-13 rating and depiction of collegiate parties and...

  I wonder, both as a parent and a follower of the way of Jesus, how to even go about defining violence, and what my call as a Christian is – or for that matter, simply as a member of the human species – to do about it. I remember when I took wrestling in grade school and I pinned Andrew,...

A while ago, a man I considered to be quite wise at the time said to me “People change, but not that much.” I didn’t know quite what to make of that, probably because the person who said it was actually our pastor. Maybe he was a bit jaded. Maybe it was time for a new job. In any case, I didn’t...

Jaden Aubrey is a stunningly beautiful five-year-old girl with bronze hair and hazel-green eyes.  She is the fire and the clown in our family, always moving at full velocity and stopping only to sleep (if then).  She fears nothing and examines everything; we joke that when she grows up, she will...