Dr. Margee Kerr is a sociologist who studies fear. She and other experts who write about how to keep New Year’s resolutions say that the secret to keeping resolutions is not to follow most people’s usual approach. Most people’s usual approach is to think about how we’re deficient, inadequate, unsuccessful, and try really, really hard…

Were the Magi real? Did they actually make their way from a distant land in the East some 2,000 years ago, following a mysterious star all the way to Bethlehem? And did they really bring the Child Jesus those gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh? Good questions. Every year around this time of course, astronomers,…

Today we pass out of the Christmas season, beyond the simplicity of Luke’s story of a humble birth with angels and shepherds, and beyond John’s exquisite message of the Word becoming flesh and living among us. Today we begin the Epiphany season – shifting from rejoicing at God’s coming among us to reflecting on what…

This is a story of two kings. The first lived in a lavish palace, and was surrounded advisors, groupies, and underlings. His domain was always growing, covering large expanses of geography from Palestine to parts of modern-day Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. He built great infrastructures – giant fortresses, waterways, and theaters. The people in his…

A man was walking through the mall. He came to an escalator and decided to go up a floor. As he approached, he noticed a warning sign: “Dogs must be carried on escalator.” The man grew anxious, desperate even, as he looked around, asking himself, “Where am I going to find a dog?” The star…

The plot is familiar. It could well be a contemporary tale. We meet a grasping dictator, determined to hang on to power at all costs, paranoid and bloodthirsty. We meet determined seekers after truth, who although without “power” in the normal sense, are possessed with faith and adventure to seek and to find. We meet…

Celebrating the birth of Jesus is an incredible opportunity for all Christians to begin again—be born again—to a life of transformation, first of ourselves and then as instruments of transformation in the world. Our scripture readings today mark the feast of the Epiphany, a word that Webster defines as “to show forth, manifest” and “the…

In this season of Epiphany we enter the realm of light. In fact the Greek church, in the language of the people, has called this season, Ta Phota: “the lights.” In the Eastern church, this season of light is celebrated as fully as the season of Christmas. This liturgical season resides also in symbolism, something…

I want to give a personal two thumbs up to the movie Big Fish. Big Fish is the story of a father and a son that begins and ends at a river. The father, Edward Bloom, is larger than life. On the day of his son William’s birth, he catches the biggest catfish in Alabama’s…