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A few of my Jackson Park companions this morning: a muskrat too distracted by its lunch to notice me, a red-winged blackbird, a ruby-crowned kinglet, and a brown creeper with a snack in its beak.
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A brief Good Friday reflection, from the vantage point of our troubled days.
Good Friday is to stand helplessly before imperial and religious power with no recourse. It is to recognize that the tragedies unfolding obviously before our eyes cannot be stopped by any well-argued point, any appeal to dignity or justice, any cry to heaven.
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So good to see the yellow-rumped warblers and white-throated sparrows for the first time this spring!
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A good morning wandering through Jackson Park: blue-winged teals, red-breasted mergansers, a brown creeper making his gravity-defying climb, and little patches of blood root brightening up the forest floor.
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I joined today’s Hands Øff protest not because protesting is the best or only way to respond to injustice or because I agree with the many different perspectives represented.
No, I joined because I’m a Christian, called to bear witness to the truth and to stand in love with and for my neighbors.
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In today’s newsletter I’m thinking about reconciliation and place. >I wonder if we’ve pursued reconciliation while ignoring our relationship to place because we’ve lived detached from place long enough that we’ve forgotten how strange and damaging this way of life is.
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How does a preacher respond to the rise of authoritarianism and its accompanying disinformation campaigns? This, about Archbishop Óscar Romero’s homilies immediately before his assassination, is instructive.
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Thoughts about reconciliation and joy – not only as a goal but as an experience – in this week’s newsletter.
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Hey preacher, what’s the passage and topic for your sermon this week? We’ll be in Psalm 107:17-22, “God’s healing deserves extravagant thanksgiving.”
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Something like this is my standard response to speaking invitations from white Christian organizations these days. I’d love to say yes to this particular invitation… and I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t work out.
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I recently received a message from a civil servant who shared how the presidential administration’s policies and caustic rhetoric have impacted them and their team. This person shared what they want USA Christians to understand and I’m sharing it with their permission.
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“It was a triumph of men who in their effort to replace equality with caste and to build inordinate wealth on a foundation of abject poverty have succeeded in killing democracy, art and religion.”
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The red-winged blackbirds are back, a sure sign that winter is on its way out.
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The wilder life gets the more prone I am to reach for thick, meaty books. What are you reading these days?
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What are a preacher’s priorities during these cruel and chaotic days? Here are ten things I’m trying to remember each time I step into the pulpit.
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“Discernment helps us come to know our true identity in creation, vocation in the world, and unique place in history as an expression of divine love.”
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It’s tempting, for me, when confronted with such objectively degrading slander to respond in kind. I want to see those who engage in such blasphemy as less than the humans they are; it gives me license to respond to cruelty with more cruelty… Of course, the instant we succumb to dehumanization, the battle has been lost.
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“Race is not primarily about hate and ignorance. It’s about greed. It always has been. And it is the purpose of this book that you might understand the unholy relationship between race and greed, best understood not as a marriage but in terms of parentage: race and racism are children of Mammon.”
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“Essentially, the point being made is that the Palestinians did not exist, or were of no account, or did not deserve to inhabit the country.”
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Where others can only see valleys filled with dry bones, God’s reconciling communities will discern watersheds to protect, redlined neighborhoods to resource, and tyrants disguised as politicians and technocrats to defy.
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Made this for supper tonight. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️! Here’s a gift link.
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Lot’s of avian activity in Jackson Park on this warm January morning – juncos, bluebirds, cardinals, goldfinches – including this handsome robin chowing down on sumac berries.
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It was cold and snowy in Jackson Park this morning, but this red-tailed hawk, hermit thrush, and downy woodpecker made my Tuesday walk more than worth it.
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