Dear Right Reverend J. Jon Bruno, Warm Advent greetings to you at this season of thanksgiving and expectation. I have come to treasure these opportunities to reflect on the last quarter as I write my ember letters to you. On this December Ember, I have been thinking about Thomas Merton, whose feast day was a […]

Ten years after 9/11 and on the 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, it is appropriate to reflect with the Archbishop Rowan Williams on war and peace. In Writing in the Dust: After September 11, Williams invites his readers to sit with their emotions and inclinations (no matter how disturbing) in what he calls […]

Readings for Thanksgiving Day Deuteronomy 8:7-18 Psalm 65 2 Corinthians 9:6-15 Luke 17:11-19 This sermon was preached at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley CA on Thanksgiving November 24, 2011. You shall eat your fill and bless the LORD your God for the good land that he has given you. As a freshman at Westmont […]

This reflection was shared at the “Emerging Scholars of Christian Spirituality” Breakfast at the American Academy of Religion Conference in San Francisco CA on Sunday, November 20, 2011. Sandra Schneiders: “I suspect that the reason the self-implicating character of the study of spirituality is problematic for those of us in the discipline is not that […]

Social activist and lay theologian William Stringfellow offers hard-hitting insight on war and peace in An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. After insisting on the collective guilt of all humanity in perpetuating violence and the power of death (with a particularly harsh critique of the United States), Stringfellow calls Christians […]

Readings for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A) Exodus 33:12-23 Psalm 99 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 Matthew 22:15-22 This sermon was preached at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley CA on Sunday October 16, 2011. In a few weeks, many of us will greet a variety of familiar and perhaps frightening faces at our door, […]

Readings for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost Exodus 16:2-15 Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45 Philippians 1:21-30 Matthew 20:1-16 This sermon was preached at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley CA on Sunday September 18, 2011 Over the last few years, I have grown in appreciation of all things Yiddish, especially the language. Not only do I love […]

Dear Right Reverend J. Jon Bruno, I hope this Ember letter finds you well and that you are enjoying “the mystery of our redemption” on this Holy Cross Day. As I reflect on Christ’s power to draw all people to himself when lifted up from the earth, I recall the various gatherings that I have […]

            In exploring the ethical dimensions of war and peace, biblical scholar and theologian Walter Wink offers an approach that provides a helpful “grammar” for understanding the complexity and opacity of human violence. As an alternative to the Ancient Worldview (in which all things in earth are mirrored in heaven), the Spiritualist Worldview (in which […]

As a freshman at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, I sat in a classroom that usually pulsated with nervous excitement and energy due to weekly quizzes and a desire to impress fellow classmates with profound comments and questions. However, on this particular day, the class sat hushed under a dark cloud of somber uncertainty. The […]