Essay

When I take the bus from my Project Neighborhood house to Calvin’s campus or vice versa, it takes me around an hour (as compared to a 20 minute car drive). Being no stranger to hassle, I sometimes take it in…

I would consider myself a Bruce Springsteen fan, not a devotee. Bruce and I were close back in the day. His Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town were staples on my turntable. Maybe a decade later…

The first time I tried sushi was almost fifteen years ago when a parishioner named Bill Smith took me to his favorite Japanese restaurant. Bill Smith has since gone to be with the Lord, but I’ll never forget that day…

In third grade, I discovered the Chronicles of Narnia. The books have been inseparable from me ever since. As an adult, I still love reading the stories. The audio books are a particular favorite whenever I take a solo road…

All of us are aware of the biblical phrase, “they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” Some of us recognize that these words are found in the eschatological vision of Isaiah (repeated in Micah).…

I spent this afternoon on a train with a gazillion other people in the heart of Bangkok. My big body and beard made me seem like Sasquatch standing in the midst of the Thai people. Last week, while traveling in…

Toward the end of "The Two Towers", by J.R.R. Tolkien, Frodo and Sam, on their way to destroy the Ring, take a rest "in a dark crevice between two great piers of rock" on the stairs of Cirith Ungol. As…

A couple of months ago at a conference I was privileged to hear former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.  The conference was aimed chiefly at preachers and teachers of preaching and so in one of his lectures, Williams had a…

There’s nothing like moving to give you concrete evidence of how much stuff you own. We moved from a rental to our own home and were forced to confront our possessions. Not only that, we had to pack it all,…