imagining how the church can reorient around mission

When I read this today, I thought to myself, “Has she seen my desk, my bedroom, my house?”

“Wherever I have lived my room and soon
the entire house is filled with books;
poems, stories, histories, prayers of
all kinds stand up gracefully or are
heaped on shelves, on the floor, on
the bed. Strangers old the new offering
their words bountifully and thoughtfully,
lifting my heart. read more

This morning (my birthday) I was reading some poetry to my wife today outside under our lovely birch tree in our front yard.  Sitting under this tree have been the launching pad of some of our most stimulating conversations.  With a cup of coffee or glass of wine, an endless line of wonderful friends have sat with us under this colossal tree over the years.  It reminds me of what Eden must have been like.

Anyway, I stumbled upon this next passage, which captured my thoughts about aging and stirred in me a bit of an existential moment. read more

I am embarking on a summer discipline of reading some poetry every morning in hopes of whetting my appetite for something other than “churchy, missional” stuff. I have never been good at reading anything other than non-fiction. So, in light of that of that goal I asked my good friend and author Shann Ferch to recommend his Michael Jordan of the poetry world.  He immediately suggested Mary Oliver. So far, he was spot on.  Here is just one of many amazing poems from her book Thirst.

The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist read more