February 2 is the celebration of the purification of Mary after the birth of Jesus and his presentation at the Temple Luke 2:22-39. The passage also presents two prophetic statements, one from a man, Simeon, and one from a woman, Anna (although Anna’s specific words are not given, we are […]
Lamentations
72 posts
Time is such an odd thing. It is, in a very real sense, relative and yet it is clearly measurable. I remember how long December 1-25 seemed to last when I was a child and yet today years go by so quickly I can hardly separate one Christmas or birthday […]
This has been the worst year of our lives and yet we are so thankful for all the love and support we have received. Today is the first anniversary of Mack’s death. It was sudden, swift, and completely unexpected. So was the response. From all corners of the world, around […]
A month or so ago I was talking to an old and close friend and we began discussing reviews of our work. This led to discussing how one reviewer misunderstood my conclusions in The Rabbinic Targum of Lamentations: Vindicating God. Curious to look at it all again, I pulled up […]
I have written a lot about this, as you might expect from someone who spent more than a decade working on lament, but it is always good to hear others say the same thing. Peter Enns has a nice summary of a lecture by Walter Brueggemann on “God’s Infidelity.” Brueggemann […]
Yesterday I had the regular pleasure of meeting with an academic and administrative colleague who is also an Episcopal priest. (We share a fair amount in common, as you can tell.) Understandably our discussion turned towards how I and my family are coping nearly ten months after Mack’s death. One […]
This was written for the students in our Presidential Leadership Academy. It is cliché to say that leadership comes in many forms, but of course it does. It also often comes upon us when we are not expecting or even wanting it. Such has been the case for my wife […]
I have mentioned before that Mack and I would read comics together every night. For a while it was hard to read comics again because of that fact. But at the same time comics and cartoonists have also helped me cope. So last week when Dan Piraro posted this comic […]
Today I was talking with a colleague about another tragic death of a young person. The runner collapsed and died during the Pittsburgh Marathon apparently with a “coronary artery abnormality.” No one was to blame for his death. He was born with this condition, although he was unaware of it. […]
But not any more. This picture of Mack was taken shortly after Christmas 2011. You can read more about the studio session on my PhotoBlog. That fall I had purchased this silly little gray fedora from Target. I am a practical person and my head gets cold in the winter, […]