Bromleigh McCleneghan

David Petraeus's failings aren't the same as his biblical namesake's. No one went to die so he could bed Paula Broadwell. Still, we expected more.

Americans are not very good with failure. We take it personally; we draw lines in the sand and cast blame. And the Chicago Public Schools are, for the most part, failing—failing to provide an environment that fosters teacher excellence, failing to provide a physical environment in which kids can learn, failing to graduate kids with the basic skills to succeed, failing to graduate kids at all.

Tom Stoppard’s wonderful play Rock N’ Roll covers the period between 1968, when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague, and 1990, when the Rolling Stones played the city. It’s Stoppard at his near-best: warm and funny, romantic and revolutionary, dedicated to ideas.  At the heart of the play is the reluctant dissident Jan. In Prague, says Jan, “there is only one agent of truth. That is not human—humans disagree with each other.”

What if the Rapture really happened? This is the question Tom Perrotta takes up in his novel The Leftovers.

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The same week the European Organization for Nuclear Research announced the discovery of a new sub-atomic particle—which may be the missing puzzle piece for physics’ theory of everything—we also learned that some 46 percent of poll respondents hold “creationist views of human origins.” I might not be as incensed as Katha Pollitt is, but I’m distressed by this poll.

A few months ago I preached a sermon that a lot of people loved and a few people hated. I heard from both groups but spent more time, as is perennially the case in ministry, with the few. I didn’t set off to be controversial. I looked at the texts, read some commentaries. (Get behind me, Satan.) And then, in the middle of the week, a United Methodist preacher's kid made the news.

I once went on a blind date. He was a law student, a friend of a friend, and I was a seminarian. We met for drinks. He was nice, funny. He was a self-identifying Christian--the first one, actually, I had ever gone out with. We were talking about our chosen professions; he was, as many are, fascinated by the idea of a call to ministry. My call story is not exactly dramatic, but it has a social justice edge, forged on youth group mission trips and in researching poverty. “I want to make the world a better place,” I told the date. The future lawyer looked at me and asked, “But isn’t the world a fallen place?”

As I kid, I was scared of monsters. Specifically, the Star Trek Salt-Vampire and Hans Christian Anderson’s Death, sitting on the Emperor’s chest. (I slept on my side for years after reading “The Nightingale.” Death couldn’t get you, I reasoned, if you declined him a seat.) But I was never afraid of the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are, the best-known book by Maurice Sendak, who died on Tuesday.

The General Conference of the United Methodist Church convened in Tampa last week. I’m not one of the 988 delegates who have descended on Florida to do the work of our church, nor of the 4,000 hosts, bishops, pages, translators and myriad lobbyists there to help. My participation is limited to following the proceedings from 1,000 miles away. Still, my emotions have been all over the place. And judging from Twitter and Facebook, this roller coaster of highs and lows is almost universal among those who are there. The stakes feel high this year, higher than usual.

Recently my father-in-law's Medicaid plan stopped covering Lexapro—with little notice. By the time he could get authorization for a "preferred" antidepressant, he had quit cold turkey.

Paul tells us to "resolve" never to put a hindrance to the gospel before another person—and resolve is what it takes. By initiating a conversation about hell, Rob Bell is putting his reputation on the line.

The current issue of Marie Claire contains an interview with a young, unmarried pastor whose calling impacts her sex life--because her ordination vows include celibacy in singleness.

Many of the recent articles about clergy burnout suggested that it's a symptom of cognitive dissonance: pastors think their job ought to be a particular kind of work and are frustrated when it ends up involving something else. None of the media coverage, however, offered a compelling description of the call to ministry itself.