Big Questions|Quest Blog

I suppose that every American of my generation has a “how Dr. King shaped my life” story. Here is mine.

2014-11-12 Although I have delivered some thousand sermons on almost as many discrete topics, one way or another each circles back to a single theme. This tendency, I’m told, is not uncommon. Every minister worth his or her salt has one great sermon in them. It’s no wonder that we return time and again to…

I collect stones, and now also beach glass, as we walk with our dog along the lake.

A few shovel fulls
of earth
await humbly.
Dark brown as only
earth can be—
dug from the fragrant depths.

I would like to believe when I die that I have given myself away like a tree that sows seeds every spring and never counts the loss, because it is not loss, it is adding to future life.

Eight years ago, my mother died from ovarian cancer. It was one of the greatest blessings of my life to be able to spend the last few weeks of her life caring for her as tenderly as she had cared for me in my earliest, most vulnerable time on earth.

When we said goodbye to our son at Logan Airport, his sisters cried and his mother hugged him hard, and I did too, and he looked embarrassed.

On a sunny day in September…a stern-faced, plainly dressed man could be seen standing still on a street corner in the busy Chicago Loop.

Sin is what caused me to leave the church and give up religion, and sin is what brought me back.

What is it that makes something Evil, and not just really bad, or unfortunate, or wrong? And why does evil exist?