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Disturbing the Universe

December 2020

Unlike most people, I do not feel much Dickensian nostalgia at Christmastime. The holiday fell just a few days after my father died early in my childhood, and all my memories of the season are darkened by the shadow of that sadness. For this reason, perhaps, I am rarely stirred by the sight of manger scenes and tinseled trees. Yet, more and more, Christmas has enlarged in meaning for me, primarily as an answer to my doubts, as evidence of the ...

A Melancholy Thanksgiving

November 2020

I’ve been working on a modern Devotions, which he wrote in 1623 during a bubonic plague outbreak. One-third of London’s residents would die, and in November Donne himself, the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, fell ill. His journal of illness captures the melancholy mood of that time, not so different from what we experience in 2020. In , the great poet and pastor searches for some shred of hope, some reason for gratitude. Ah, now I hear a different ringing ...

Showing Us Another Way

October 2020

Again and again this year, scenes of racial injustice have played out before our eyes. African Americans insist that such incidents are nothing new; the difference is that now iPhones and body cameras record them for the world to see. Tragically, some of the resulting protests have led to violence. In a year marked by division and hostility, I find myself going back to an event from 2015 that played out in Charleston, South Carolina. One warm evening a young ...

Election Year Musings

September 2020

Last year I granted an interview to the Church of Ireland Gazette, a magazine that was trying to interpret US politics for its Irish readers. In view of the coming election, I have revisited that interview, editing the discussion for American readers. The world seems to be becoming increasingly polarized and divided. We are living in a more uncertain world. Is there anything you think the Church needs to say or to be, in order to act with integrity in ...

Family Secrets

August 2020

I’ve been writing a memoir and, like most memoirs, it deals with family secrets. Unplanned pregnancies, abortions, suicides, addictions, extramarital affairs, prison time—often families don’t speak of such events because of shame. However, as this guest blog by David Bannon shows, repressed secrets exert a dark power even if they never get exposed. Perhaps that’s one reason the Bible treats human failings with such unflinching honesty? —Philip My daughter Jessica died of a fentanyl-laced heroin overdose in 2015. She ...

Disturbing the Universe

A Melancholy Thanksgiving

Showing Us Another Way

Election Year Musings

Family Secrets

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