Sin is behovely, but…

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 […]

A Poem for Labor Day

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. […]

Ember Letter: Pentecost 2011

Dear Right Reverend J. Jon Bruno, I pray that you are having a transformative and inspiring Pentecost in sunny Los Angeles. And in the spirit of Pentecost, I hope that this Ember Letter captures some of the energy of my spiritual journey the way an “ember” contains the energy of a fire. I have been […]

Receiving the Hyssop: Reading the Johannine Passion as Pastoral Theodicy

My spiritual journey has been both plagued and propelled by the question of suffering. The theological dilemma posed more than 2000 years ago by the Greek philosopher Epicurus still baffles theologians today: How do we reconcile an all-loving and all-powerful God with a world of suffering? My call to the priesthood and to pastoral ministry […]

The ‘Winnowed’ and ‘Gathered’ Community: Reading John 11:45-53 in Light of Mimetic Theory

This paper was presented at the College Theology Society Annual Meeting at Iona College on June 4 2011 in the section Spirituality: Contemporary Conversations with Classic Texts. On my first visit to the Holy Land, I often found myself wanting to linger over sites after the tour guide moved on. One time, after the guide […]

Frames of Violence in Israel-Palestine

Several years ago, I traveled to Jerusalem with a group of Messianic Jews to attend their annual conference. The Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations holds conferences for its members each year in different locations and this year they were meeting in the Holy Land. Although I was starting to call myself a Messianic Jew (or, […]

Ember Letter: Lent 2011

Dear Right Reverend J. Jon Bruno, I trust that your Lenten season is off to a good and wholesome start and that this Ember letter will find you well. It is a cool and balmy night here in the Berkeley hills and the only noises I heard on my evening walk were the scurrying of […]

Epiphany: Augustine the Hippo

It may be a fool’s errand to try to summarize the most influential Christian thinker (after St. Paul) in a brief blog post, but I will attempt to do so nonetheless. Perhaps Simeon the Holy Fool will intervene on my behalf and help me. I actually just learned that Simeon the Holy Fool is the […]

Epiphany: Perpetua

I just read a brief article about Jared Loughner, the troubled 22-year-old who recently murdered 6 innocent bystanders in Tucson Arizona (including a 9-year-old girl). He had struggled with an addiction to hallucinogenic drugs; he had asserted dangerous political views and he believed that the end of the world was near. I read about Jared […]

Epiphany: Apophthegmata Patrum

After his parents died, 18-year-old Anthony heard Matthew 19:21 read in church and felt called to take literally Christ’s command to sell all his possessions and give to the poor. After selling all of his property and inheritance, he fled to the Egyptian desert to do battle with the demons who presumably lived there. He […]