The Question of the Age

April 22, 2018
I’ve recently been reading a powerful little book by Professor Tim Snyder, a historian at Yale, called On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Snyder studies the rise of…

Easter Fool’s Day

April 1, 2018
Yesterday, before any of you got here, and without even asking permission from the Wardens and the Vestry, I collected every last snow shovel I could find, and every last…

Unlearning our Lessons

March 4, 2018
What would you say is the most important lesson you’ve ever learned? It might be hard to come up with that; after all, the lessons that are really the most…

The Strange Glory of Mercy

February 25, 2018
There was a story in the news this past week that you might easily have missed, if only because there are so many stories in the news these days that…

Making Our Offer

February 18, 2018
Just beneath the surface of the three readings you just heard there is a flowing stream, like a river running through underground passages. It is a stream of water that…

Despair: Drive and Danger

February 4, 2018
Imagine with me, for just a moment, a story. Imagine that there is a college counselor somewhere in America, in a place out in the midwest somewhere. Imagine that she…

Weighty Words

January 28, 2018
Sometimes the lectionary offers a group of lessons for Sunday morning that seem to speak directly to the issues of our day. Sometimes they don’t, and when that happens, as…

It’s For You

January 14, 2018
During the Christmas season I noticed that I received fewer of those letters that you get tucked into the Christmas card—you know the one I mean; the one that used…

In It With Me

January 7, 2018
Where I grew up, this season of very cold weather always brought with it a certainty about at least one thing you would be doing at school. During the more…