Blessed Are The Peacemakers

  The Things We Cannot Learn Alone I love Andrew Bird and Fiona Apple’s “Left-Handed Kisses.” I’ve been dissecting it recently, since songs have a habit of moving into my  brain and rearranging the furniture.  On its surface, it’s a love song, of sorts. Andrew Bird enters as the ultimate skeptic. He doesn't buy into fate, and he certainly isn't in the market for romantic twitterpation. Yet, despite his best intellectual defenses, an inconvenient woman is now standing squarely in the middle of his carefully calibrated worldview. Somehow, out of everyone on Earth, he stumbled into her. And now the skeptic is writing a love song. Fiona Apple is entirely unimpressed. While he analyzes the mystery of finding her and reaches for increasingly elaborate language to describe it, she keeps interrupting the argument. Her counterpoint is simple: That is very clever. But will you actually risk anything? The more I’ve l...

  In 2012, a well-intentioned attempt to restore a deteriorating fresco of Jesus left the original face almost unrecognizable. I wonder how often we do the same thing.  The God Our Children Meet First For a few people I love very much, who have given me reason to think more deeply about the difference between the Jesus we are shown and the Jesus who is . This was written with you in my heart. For most children, God is invisible. Parents are not. Before children know enough theology to understand what Christians mean when we say that God is merciful, just, patient, holy, forgiving or loving, they're already forming ideas about Him. We tell them He is their Father, and then we teach them, often without realizing it, what Father means. Nowhere is that lesson more powerful than in what happens when they do something wrong. A child lies. A teenager tries alcohol. Someone breaks a commandment, gets pregnant, stops believing, sleeps with someone they shouldn't, becomes ...

Lichtkind (Child of Light), 1972 Silver print with grattage by Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein. Helnwein’s work frequently explores childhood, vulnerability, injury and the resilience of the child. The Girl Who Sang at High Noon There was once a little girl who sang at noon. Not at night, when songs belong to dreams and darkness can hide the face of the singer. Not in the blue hour of morning, when the world is still half-dreaming. At noon. When the sun stood directly overhead and even the shadows gathered themselves small beneath her feet. She carried a melody that belonged only to her. No one had taught it to her. She could not remember learning it. It seemed to have arrived with her, stitched somehow into the small body she inhabited, as natural as breath and nearly as necessary. When she was very young, she assumed everyone had one. So she sang. She sang while she played and while she wandered. She sang when she was delighted and when she was afraid. Sometimes the tun...

  What Is Mine To Do? There's a conversation taking place among a number of people I know, and since it's clearly on a lot of minds, I thought I'd throw my own thoughts into the mix. They'll probably be unpopular. At this point, that hardly seems worth mentioning. 🤠 The interesting thing is that not too long ago I likely would have been on the other side of this discussion. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm right now or that I was wrong then. It simply means life has a way of changing the questions we ask, and I've found myself asking some very different ones lately. For years, whenever I encountered another frightening story, alleged conspiracy, another hidden evil, my first question was generally:  Is this true? I wanted to understand the world. I wanted to protect people. I wanted to know who could be trusted . Looking back, I don't think I was chasing darkness because I loved darkness. I think I genuinely believed I ...