There’s A Way; There’s A Voice

Darkness and snow descend; The clock on the mantlepiece Has nothing to recommend Nor does the face in the glass Appear any nobler than our own With these words, WH Auden opens his poem, "For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio." They are striking words, in part because they are unexpected; in part because they …

Impressions in the Sand: Part 2

Israel was a new color palette. My rural, American life is painted in deep greens and blues; in the hues of the bright flowers and sharp snow. In exuberance and apple pie; in small town life. Israel was none of those things. It was creaky and full of history, made up of stones that existed …

The Hope I Hold

I sat in Mass a few months ago and watched a blackbird take flight over the tree line. Through the glass window, its wings caught the sky, which was a magnificent shade of gray against the charcoal form. That's a strange description of the color gray, which usually earns the phrase "meh" instead, but it's …

The Sacred and Rembrandt

Let me tell you a story. It's Lent. The middle of Lent, to be precise. The part of Lent where cutting things out of my life has lost any sense of novelty and turned into deep longing. I know this feeling is part of the point of Lent, and yet my thoughts are turning from …

Divine Grace Among Us

In the course of my life, I've practiced Christianity with a lot of denominations. The Wesleyans taught me about entire sanctification and Bible translation; the Anglicans about cathedrals and how the British pronounce the name "Isaiah" (Eye-zeye-uh). I learned how to cook after I became Mennonite and when one of the elders of the church …