Category Archives: Theology

Lent, Lent2026, Theology

Spirited (Lack of) Discussion

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Two of them are in my back yard, perched on the yet-to-bloom forsythia as they wait for their time at the feeder. Traditionally, cardinals are departed loved ones come to visit. Attending a funeral, finishing The Secret of Secrets (Dan Brown’s latest Robert Langdon novel), Palm Sunday ushering in Holy Week, watching the cardinals in my yard: death hovers over my days.

Most people don’t want to talk about death, whether or not they claim and are claimed by a faith. There are a few exceptions – those who have had near-death experiences, those who are dying and have made peace with it, and the enlightened few such as the Dalai Lama. Death is just a part of life to be accepted rather than feared for them. They may not focus on death, but they don’t deny its existence or their own inevitable end. They give death a nod and get on with their day, grateful for and loving what the day brings.

Perhaps I should think of the cardinals as death’s presence gracing my life – acknowledge that death is real and appreciate the winged reminder that I will soon enough be a departed soul. It might make talking about death easier; it might make talking about death a relief.

Lent, Lent2026, Meditation, Theology

Theological Perspective

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Theology was considered the queen of the sciences in Europe a few centuries back. The assumption was that every field of study would support the Church’s current vision of the Christian God and creation.

Then came the Enlightenment, a heliocentric solar system, the periodic table of elements, and a Big Bang origin for all of it. Theology wasn’t the queen of the sciences: it was just bad science.

Then came divorce. Science would take care of the how‘s of it all while theology would confine itself to the why‘s. Impartial observation would offer answers to the former, morality codes and religious practices would lead to answers for the latter.

That got washed away by the observer effect – that scientific results were influenced by how scientists chose to observe something. (electrons and protons would appear to be particles or waves, depending on the observer’s choices). Heisenberg found that a particle’s position and momentum couldn’t be determined at the same time, and the Uncertainty Principle was born. Scientific knowledge was inherently limited by its own practice – by the limits of the people involved.

Theology, at its best, offers some insight into all this. All of life is God created and God related. It’s from this perspective that humans live, move, and seek answers to the great mysteries of the universe and the soul. God is not a big, beloved object in a humanly constructed world. Humans are beloved creatures in God’s world, held by divine love and living in this mysterious creation.

When we accept that how and what we see are bound to our limited perspective, we lose the illusion of Godlike power and understanding. But with luck, we just might gain the wisdom to see the miraculous nature of all that is, was and ever will be. Whether you look at the stars from your back porch or through the Hubble telescope.

Lent2026, Meditation, philosophy, Theology

Timely

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According to Isaac Newton, absolute time exists independently from anyone perceiving it, and it progresses at a constant pace throughout the universe.

According to Albert Einstein, time is not absolute, but intertwined with space and affected by gravity and speed (he also believed that the separation of past, present, and future was a “stubbornly persistent illusion”).

Stephen Hawking held that time began at the Big Bang, along with everything else.

The arrow of time moves from the past toward the future. There is no reversing of time’s arrow.

In my everyday life, time behaves as Newton’s independent dimension. It marches on, regardless of what’s going on in my life. I age a year at the same rate, whether I’m twenty going on twenty-one or eighty-four going on eighty-five. The clocks keep ticking and I move from cradle to grave.

But at the extremes – subatomic or cosmically large – time gets wonky. It’s so married to space that it becomes one half of a compound name: spacetime (space/time, space-time, you get the drift).

But scientists aren’t the only ones vexed by time. Philosophers and theologians were dealing with this headache long before modernity: is time an internal sense of duration, or an ordered relation of events? Is the time I experience, which isn’t quite so orderly or constant [sitting in traffic for 20 minutes feels a lot longer than watching a 45ish minute episode of Doctor Who (Okay, the old ones were 25 minutes, but you get the Time And Relative Dimensions In Space drift)], as real as the time that passes in orderly minutes and hours? How does God fit into time, stand outside of time, create time, enter time, redeem time, sustain time? What about past, present, and future – are they real, or something that helps me keep what I’ve done, what I’m doing, and what I might do in some kind of order? Yikes!

But if I take a deep breath, then really consider time, something emerges out of all this talk – something as profound as it is simple: my time is limited. Whether time exists in creation or outside it really doesn’t affect the reality of my own personal expiration date. My moments pass and cannot be regained. Soon enough, I’ll return to the dust from which I was made.

A lot of things I might consider important drop away when I accept and embrace the limited time I have on this earth. Letting go of jealousy, sarcasm, and one-upmanship becomes easier. Loving what does count – love, kindness, joy, others – just might get a little easier, too.

My favorite Grateful Dead song, melodic and wise…

Advent, Advent 2025, Biblical Reflection, Meditation, Theology

Evangelism

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Daily Readings: Psalm 72:1-7; Isaiah 40:1-11; John 1:19-28

“Comfort, oh comfort my people, says you God. Speak softly and tenderly to Jerusalem, but also make it very clear that she has served her sentence, that her sin is taken care of – forgiven! She’s been punished enough and more than enough, and now it’s over and done with.”

Thunder in the desert! “Prepare for God’s arrival! Make the road straight and smooth, a highway fit for our God. Fill in the valleys, level off the hills, smooth out the ruts, clear out the rocks. Then God’s bright glory will shine and everyone will see it. Yes. Just as God has said.

“These people are nothing but grass, their love fragile as wildflowers. The grass withers, the wildflowers fade, if God so much as puffs on them. Aren’t these people just so much grass? True, the grass withers and the wildflowers fade, but our God’s Word stands firm and forever.”

Climb a high mountain, Zion. You’re the preacher of good news. Raise your voice. Make it good and loud, Jerusalem. You’re the preacher of good news. Speak loud and clear. Don’t be timid! Tell the cities of Judah, “Look! Your God!” Look at him! God, the Master, comes in power, ready to go into action.

He is going to pay back his enemies and reward those who have loved him. Like a shepherd, he will care for his flock, gathering the lambs in his arms, hugging them as he carries them, leading the nursing ewes to good pasture. The Message, Isaiah 40:1-11

At our weekly mid-week Eucharist, we recently explored evangelism during the homily. This does not seem to be a favorite word among our church members (even though our patron is St. John, the Evangelist). For me, being reared in the south where “Bible thumpers” were plentiful and most of the radio options were either country music or preaching, I was particularly wary of these “types”. I even looked down at them as unsophisticated and shallow. If they only knew the intricacies of our faith, the deep underpinnings of theological study and thought…

Well, Jesus keeps it really simple, does he not? Maybe we don’t have to go shouting  up on a high mountain to bring the good news to others but share I must. Go into all the nations proclaiming the good news was the last directive Jesus gave us in the Gospels—what about this do we not get? If you cringe at the thought of shouting from the mountain tops, as most of us would, I imagine, there are good options. 

Attending a prayer service at our cathedral church in Boston years ago, I read in the service bulletin that evangelism is being with someone in such a way that they know you’ve been with Jesus. That could work for most, I think. At any rate, I’m going to do more of that this Advent.

Offered by Bill Albritton, in whom God delights.

Meditation, Theology

Priorities

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UHaul is coming to pick up the three boxes that carried our stuff from our Vermont home to our Massachusetts one. A dumpster arrives on Monday so we can clear the house of things that are in such poor condition that they are good for no one. There’s still a mess in every single room that needs attention, and I’m heading north to a sibling get-together tomorrow. All of that seemed really important until a little before seven this morning. A friend’s diagnosis arrived in my email and changed everything.

Prayers, a phone call, an offer to help: that’s what really matters. The rest – it’ll happen. I just won’t consider getting it all done as my top priority.

Mantra for Moving
Meditation, observation, Theology

Ebbtide

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The Goodbyes have started; a dinner with colleagues, a final staff meeting, food and conversation with friends before the drive away. Soon to come: a final open house, turning in keys after a final walk-through. Packed boxes tucked away in corners and a spare bedroom are changing the landscape of the house. One month out, this move isn’t a once-for-all event. It’s a gradual receding of the activities, things, and people that have marked our daily life these past three years. We are still here, but something of us is receding bit by bit, drawing us out from this particular place.

Ebbtide

It feels like an ebbtide, this pull of gravity. Unlike a true one, we won’t be brought back to this place on the next incoming tide. We will emerge in another place – just as it brought us to this new place not so long ago.

On the water
Biblical Reflection, proverbs, Theology

Like a Hair in the Throat

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Do not eat the bread of the stingy; do not desire their delicacies; for like a hair in the throat, so are they. “Eat and drink!” they say to you; but they do not mean it. You will vomit up the little you have eaten, and you will waste your pleasant words. Proverbs 23:6-8, NRSV

A host’s generosity is a gift of time and effort as much as it is the cost of the groceries. Soup and bread on a cold November evening; Mac and cheese with a simple salad brought over by a neighbor during convalescence; coffee and warm muffins put out for an early morning meeting. It’s not the price at the register, but the thoughtfulness that makes such things nourishing for body and soul. It’s a pleasure to eat these meals.

A host’s lack of generosity makes even favorite foods hard to choke down. The feeling that the cost of every mouthful has been calculated and weighed against the value of the guest (and that the guest just isn’t worth the meal) does the opposite of nourish.

We know hospitality when we receive it, whatever is on the plate. It is life-giving. We also know stinginess when it’s offered – it turns whatever is on the plate rancid.

Biblical Reflection, Meditation, Prayer, proverbs, Theology

Watch Your Language

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Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Proverbs 4:24

There are six things that the Lord hates…haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that hurry to run to evil, a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family. Proverbs 6:16-19

The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence. Proverbs 10:11

It’s not the occasional swear word I worry about these days: it’s using words as weapons to harm those with different ideas, faiths, skin tones, and lovers. It’s the exaggeration and the lies designed to provoke. It’s the verbal violence aimed toward others that encourages and condones the move from reckless rhetoric to harmful physical action.

It’s tempting to answer angry and violent rhetoric with more of the same, to meet fire with fire, to win the day by yelling cruel words at those who yell at me. But ratcheting up the bitterness and anger won’t solve whatever the original issue was. It just divides neighbor from neighbor.

The damage hateful and violent speech creates is plain to see. It’s hard to take a moment, to stop the harmful words before they make it into print or speech. But it isn’t impossible. I don’t have to keep the cycle going. I can choose to hold my tongue until my thoughts and words show respect rather than disregard.

I’ve said the same prayer every morning when I awake for over a decade, written by Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow in the nineteenth century. It has been especially helpful for me – I hope it will be for you as well:

Prayer at the Beginning of the Day

O Lord, grant me to greet the coming day in peace. Help me in all things to rely upon thy holy will. In every hour of the day, reveal thy will to me. Bless my dealings with all who surround me. Teach me to treat all that comes to me throughout the day with peace of soul, and with firm conviction that thy will governs all. In all my deeds and words guide my thoughts and feelings. In unforeseen events let me not forget that all are sent by thee. Teach me to act firmly and wisely, without embittering and embarrassing others. Give me strength to bear the fatigue of the coming day and all that it shall bring. Direct my will, teach me to pray, pray thou thyself in me. Amen.

[A Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991, p.20]

This is one in a series on Proverbs. For more information, click Proverbs above…

Biblical Reflection, Meditation, Theology

All About the Clothes…

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As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this.

I Cor. 12:20-24a, NRSV

Paul continues his faith community/body metaphor in interesting specifics. We clothe the parts of bodies we find less respectable – a truth and the reason we wear pants. But I wonder if Paul had a double meaning in here.

Are the members of the community who are well clothed, who are considered important and widely respected – are they the weaker members? Are the well known and well heeled (literally) in need of this attention more than others who don’t get it? Are the unnoticed and under-appreciated who see to the wellbeing of the community the stronger ones?

It’s a cheeky take on Paul’s words, but is it accurate? What do you think?

Biblical Reflection, Meditation, Theology

Led Astray

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You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. ICorinthians 12:2, NRSV

In the ’90’s, looking through the paper, I saw the comic strip Nancy; in it, she was playing with her virtual pets – feeding the cat, tossing a ball to the dog, making sure they were happy. In the last panel, the perspective widens out from Nancy at her computer to show the living, breathing pets she was ignoring.

Idols come in different shapes and sizes, and they are rarely villainous. What makes them idols is the power I give them.