I am fairly new to the tradition of lighting candles for advent and have had a few confusing moments. Do you light the “joy” candle before the “love” candle – and where does “peace” figure in? For that matter, flaming candles in a wreath of laurel seems like a recipe for...

I love great fantasy/adventure tales, especially ones in which ordinary people in ordinary places find an escape, or rather a hidden entrance, into another world where anything is possible. In the Harry Potter stories – my personal favorite – children run through a brick wall in London’s...

Advent candles lit round the world declare our longing for the coming of Christ. We wait. And, in our waiting we hope, we pray, we yearn. Advent is a season where our energies and passions for all things to be made right are kindled. Christ, the precious Baby in the manger, is coming for us all to celebrate....

I’ve heard it said that Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose was, and still is, an angry, angry man. I have no reason to doubt it. There simply is no denying that they literally burst forth into the nation’s consciousness with a vengeance in late 1987, and for the next five-to-six years,...

It’s beginning to look a little like Christmas. You know what that means? Bell weather. During the Christmas shopping season (known liturgically as “Advent”) men and women brave the cold to stand outside stores, ringing bells and collecting change for the Salvation Army. It’s...

The sun was dying away they had all gone by then my day’s work done the Jordan stilled. I shook myself dry a final time that’s when the stones awoke with echoes they’d pocketed all day - repent! repent! repent! Another man might think himself crazy in that moment but not me, not the...

Mt. Angel Abbey is a Benedictine monastery located about four miles from my house. The abbey was built by 19th-century Swiss monks on a butte in Marion County, Oregon. On a relatively clear day, it’s possible to sit on a bench next to the retreat house and look out over hundreds of square miles...

On Christmas Eve of 2006, I boarded a plane in Connecticut and flew home to Chicago.  My parents and siblings picked me up from the airport, and we drove to church for the Christmas Eve service. I had always hoped I’d be like Mary – a young woman who loved God, whose life took an extraordinary turn. ...