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At my last congregation, I often preached at a small Saturday evening service in our chapel. I came to call it, affectionately, the "early edition." One of the occasional attendees was a nice older woman who I came to know pretty well. Sometimes she came early and we had an opportunity to visit. Did I mention she is very nice?

Every week or so, I google and #hashtag-search my way through the collective consciousness of our species, looking for new writings/ findings/research into multiverse cosmology. Ever since writing my little tome on how this new theory of everything plays with my faith, I've kept up with where things are going on that front and where things are trending. It's good to keep track of all the pertinent datapoints, which I file away neatly on Facebook for future reference. There's a peculiar thread that runs through the more recent writing on the subject. It feels like, for lack of a better word, despair.

Nothing has generated conversation on my Facebook page lately like posts about Donald Trump. Yesterday I posted a story about Catholic bishops taking on Trump. Noting that he claims to be a Presbyterian, I wondered if Presbyterian leaders should be addressing his rhetoric as well. A variety of people weighed in, and given the predominance of liberals among my FB friends most of the comments were in favor of critiquing the Donald. It was also pointed out that the PCUSA’s Advocacy Committee for Racial Ethnic Concerns has in fact responded to Trump.

Whether we are facing personal conflict in our relationships, or leaning into the harder conversations of our society—like those around racial injustice and sexual identity—many of us struggle to listen to what needs hearing and speaking what needs saying. Listening is a core competency for me as a pastor and chaplain, but I am finding listening also can be a revolutionary and democratic act.

With unprecedented intimacy and frequency, Americans are becoming witnesses to murder. With the videos of beheadings and the footage of black people being murdered by police, we’ve begun watching real people die violently in real time, often from the palm of our hands or from the screens in our laps.

My friend Bob and I were sitting on the bleachers just outside the racquetball court and trying to catch our breath between games. A group of race-running, soccer-ball kicking, tricycle-riding, and twirling-dancing preschool children spread out across the basketball court set the air abuzz with an energy I envy and filled the gym with squeals and laughter.  Several brave and curious children came near us and looked at us as if we were bears in a zoo.

Human beings bond in a number of ways. We have all manner of instinctual drives inherited from our evolutionary past; we have needs (for intimacy, pleasure, friendship, affirmation and a thousand more besides) which we depend on other people to fulfill. We have hidden parts of ourselves which we project on others so that we can, in relationship with those others, work  out our inner conflicts by proxy. We have our inner cravings for power or esteem or security which we imagine that others can satisfy for us. 

I recently told a male rabbi about my age that I find him spiritually attractive. Actually, I didn’t tell him. I posted it to his Facebook page. Immediately before adding this message to his feed, though, I hesitated over the following inner monologue: Is this creepy? Am I over-complimenting? Will this be misconstrued as some sort of strange clergy come on? Should I run this by my husband?

Faith can be a hard road, sometimes. Earlier today, Richard Beck published a short piece on his blog in response to the question, “What keeps me holding on to faith?” His answer reflects the response that many of us would give, I suspect. We are drawn to Jesus. Not necessarily to theological doctrines about Jesus or official explanations about what he did and what it accomplished or will accomplish or whatever, but to the person of Jesus, to stories about how he lived and loved in and for the world.

There it's been, resurfacing over the last couple of weeks. First, in a conversation with the pastor of the church where I grew up, as we sat and caught up about life and faith. "How does that play against process theology?" he asked, as I recounted my reflections on the nexus between faith and the multiverse.

“I can feel your love in this place,” the chorus blasts at full volume, skillfully performed by the worship band on stage. I felt nothing. 

It’s no secret that I love Ordinary Time. As time goes on, I find that the seasons I love the most in the liturgical year aren’t the high holy feasts, but the ordinary ones.

Last Saturday, my youngest son and I spent an afternoon carefully stacking a half-dozen rocks that had been worn smooth and elliptical by the French Broad River that eddied around our knees. The swift river and its small pockets of whitewater drowned out the world around us as we built a small impromptu cairn together for his birthday. After we balanced the final stone, he sat on the large foundation rock rising out of the river and clasped his hands together. As his lips whispered a prayer, I looked around and felt at peace.

There’s a popular poem about JOY, which you may have heard before. It’s an acrostic.

A few years ago a student was referred to me, the college chaplain, because he was getting in a bit of trouble. He was drinking and partying too much and making some poor decisions. This behavior was out of character for this student and his professors thought it had something to do with the fact that his mother was dying of cancer. When we sat down together in my office, the first thing this young man wanted to tell me was that he was not very “religious.”