I started this post two months ago, after watching the movie, “Spotlight.” I wrote some, but then stopped. The movie brought back a flood of old emotions, because its story intersects with mine in a couple of places. I tell the story of my journey of faith here, and so won’t now repeat everything. For purposes…
Twenty-two. That’s the number you’ll often see associated with veterans who suicide–twenty-two per day. I’ve seen a couple of reactions to it. Some think it means that service members are coming back from deployments messed up and killing themselves in extremely high numbers. Others dismiss the number, say it gives us a bad name; they point out that…
Note: This reflection is a personal response to things I’ve recently read and conversations I’ve participated in. And I’ve made some revisions in response to some of the comments I’ve received. Chaplaincy is ministry. It is ministry in a specialized setting: hospital, military, college, prison, etc. But it is ministry. It is pastoral. I find…
Garrison Keillor has been saying goodbye as long as I have been listening to him. I think I first heard him in the summer of 1986. I was a seminarian, and went out to preach one weekend at one church in a multi-church district in western Pennsylvania. The district pastor was a friend and classmate,…
Pax et bonum 