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What is, therefore, our task today? Shall I answer: “Faith, hope, and love”? That sounds beautiful. But I would say–courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth. Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature…we lack a holy rage–the recklessness which comes from the knowledge of God and humanity. The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets, and when the lie rages across the face of the earth…a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God’s earth, and the destruction of God’s world. To rage when little children must die of hunger, when the tables of the rich are sagging with food. To rage at the senseless killing of so many, and against the madness of militaries. To rage at the lie that calls the threat of death and the strategy of destruction peace. To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God. And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish…but never the chameleon.
Call committees, when sketching out a profile for their next pastor, are awfully drawn to words like these: kind, available, comforting, pastoral, articulate, flexible, intelligent, dynamic, wise, knowledgable, organized, trust-worthy, confident.

Merry Christmas!

This morning, I found myself trolling some earlier blogs I wrote about Advent and Christmas, trying to remember what thoughts I have had about them in the past (I have lots of thoughts, but can hold on to only one or two at a time).

I know Christmas is around the corner (even my family is starting to bust out the Christmas decorations), but Advent does yet have dibs on our attention for a short spell.

“…our thoughts and prayers are not enough.  It’s not enough.”

Sometimes, you know when a serendipitous moment changes the trajectory of your life’s plans.

If you know nothing else about Martin Luther, you know that he didn’t like indulgences.

Hermey: Hey, what do you say we both be independent together, huh? 

Last night I dreamt that Patrick Stewart strolled by me, wearing an intensely colored plaid pair of pants and a snazzy golf beret. He took one look at me walking along the same sidewalk, and realized that I positively screamed Lutheran Theologian.

Below are photos from my home office (I’ve discovered that you can see them a bit more clearly if you click on them.)

A few months back, which was several years later than it should have been, I stumbled on poetry by Billy Collins.

Saturday, my father, my daughter, and two friends went to cut our Christmas tree.  Every year, we march out to some spot out of town for the annual sawing down of the Tannenbaum.

Last night, we learned that there will be no indictment of Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown.

So, poverty is in the news here in South Dakota.

Daughter Else asks magnificent questions.

(This blog is an adaptation of a recent presentation I gave at the Sawmill Retreat Center in Huron, OH, for a clergy and rostered leaders’ event for two combined ELCA synods.  The theme of our days together was that of discipleship).

Appropriately, I think, I tend to keep personal updates off of my OMG Facebook page.

I was fussing with the idea of re-posting this blog this week, but then a friend of mine made reference to it today, and I viewed it as a sign that maybe I should just as well go ahead and do it for the third year running.

Twice in the last several months I’ve had occasion to tell the tale of the time I stood in front of my late husband’s closet, charged with choosing the clothes in which he’d be buried.

So in the wake of Newtown, tsunami waves of debate around gun control have already flooded our national conversations.