You know not on what day your Lord is coming.

Jesus’ depiction of the coming “of the Son of Man” stands in pretty stark contrast to popular ideas of how things might end, or at least of how the race my move into a new kind of future. We largely live among the “don’t worry, be happy” crowd – many of whom do not believe a word of the testimony concerning the last things, while others of them accept some notion of Divine judgment and some version or another of eternal or “heavenly” life, but who are at least implicitly and often explicitly convinced that such eventualities are of no real consequence, o...

Gerry Dullea: May 24, 1943 – July 29, 2018

My uncle Gerry Dullea died last Sunday night. He was 75. As is too often the case, it didn’t end well for Gerry. Details aside, he was breaking down all over the place. His body just disintegrated – in the literal sense of no longer functioning in an integral and integrated fashion. He’d been living alone since his wife died ten years ago, and had spent much of that time either ill or seriously ill. Gerry was pretty much a mess. I’ve lost ten uncles during my lifetime; Gerry was the last one. I feel differently about losing Gerry than I have about losing...

Comfort Without Complacency

Comfort, comfort my people. 2nd Sunday in Advent, Year B 1 Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her service is at an end, her guilt is expiated; Indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD double for all her sins. 3 A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! 4 Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; The rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley....