I went running with my friend Sarah the other day. She ran ahead of me the entire time; sometimes it was just a step, other times a few paces. Anyone driving by could see I was the weaker runner. I panted harder than she did, with my head pulsating. Sarah wasn’t trying to show off or prove she was...

Three of the rectangular room’s walls were lined with present-stuffed tables: bikini-clad Barbie dolls, Yahtzee, a plastic sword, Dora the Explorer. Hundreds of dreams-come-true. Santa sat in front of the remaining wall, Santa and his lively, sixty-year-old volunteer elf. “I have six more of...

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....

While programs designed to train missional pioneers remain very much works-in-progress in most dioceses and seminaries, students infused with an Episcopal-entrepreneurial spirit are presently taking the initiative to enhance the missional aspects of their seminary education by forming the Episcopal...

Journal Entry of an Angel With No Name 1  November 2011, as mankind reckons his days. In the city of New York, in the country of the United States of America, I, an angel with no name, record these words: I have descended from Heaven to America and have been walking in her cities. Though the inhabitants...

The spiritual life I had spent many years trying to locate within the walls of churches and on my knees in earnest prayer, was primarily one of the other world—the beyond. The spirit that I have found is not located beyond, but in the soil right beneath my feet. The new life it calls me to does not...

Music legend Marshall Grant, an original member of Johnny Cash’s backing band The Tennessee Three, died this weekend. I had the honor of meeting him about three years ago at the Johnny Cash Flower-Pickin’ Festival in Starkville. After a lengthy time of touring with Cash and acting as his...

In 1988, I had been a Christian for a couple years, when I first really read Matthew 25, “..when I was hungry you fed me, when I was naked you clothed me…” and James 1:27 “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in...

I have a new job. I am now a mental health rehabilitation support worker. You can tell I’m pretty proud. This new job entails my going out to visit people with a mental illness in their home and supporting them in what we call ADL’s – activities of daily living. These are things like making beds,...

The God-Shaped hole. Have you ever heard of it? It goes something like this; “People who don’t know God have a God-shaped hole inside them that only He can fill. That’s why everyone who isn’t a Christian is always chasing something. Our job as Christians is to bring people to church so they...