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In Memoriam: Wendell Berry

In Memoriam: Wendell Berry
1934–2026

It was late fall or early winter of 2000, as I recall. Wendy and I, along with a few friends, made our way to a bookstore in downtown St. Paul to hear a man read from his newest book. It was not the first time I had heard of this man, Wendell Berry of Kentucky. But that evening made me a student of this Kentucky farmer, novelist, poet, conservationist, and profoundly deep and witty writer.

The book from which he read that night was Jayber Crow: A Novel: The Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber, of the Port William Membership, as Written by Himself. I left that bookstore with a copy that is now worn, battered, and deeply loved. I now have thirty-five of his books in a place of prominence on my bookshelf. I have read them all, many of them more than once. I am pretty sure a friend or two has others that once sat on my shelf but never found their way home. On a wall in our house, I have a letter from him, written in Advent 2017, and nearby, a picture of him sitting at his writing desk—just a few feet from my own.

Wendell died on August 31, 2026, at his home in Port Royal, Kentucky. He was ninety-two. I grieve his death. I feel it as a personal loss. My tears fell, and my voice choked when I heard the news because, for more than twenty-six years, he had become an honored teacher, a spiritual influence, and a wise voice in my life. I want to tell you why. Read More

CategoriesCompanioning Others, Encouraging, Spiritual Conversation by

Church for the City

We recently celebrated an event on Whidbey Island called Church for the City.   Perhaps as many as 16 churches gathered on the Oak Harbor waterfront at Windjammer Park. It had something of the feel of an Old Testament sacred assembly: elders and neighbors gathering the people to worship, sing, serve, and remember God’s movement in the life of their community. More than a thousand of us came for worship,  a day of service to our city, and a shared communion service. And, by the way, I got a T-shirt.

Our day called to mind Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Babylon:

“But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:7).

The word translated welfare is the Hebrew word shalom – peace, wholeness, well-being, thriving, and resilience. The repetition matters: seek the city’s shalom, because in its shalom you will find your shalom. This was not a letter to people who had freely relocated after looking up housing options on Redfin. They had been carried into exile after defeat by a mighty military empire. Jeremiah’s instructions were not merely surprising; they must have been terribly upsetting. Read More

CategoriesDeep Mentoring, Jesus' Way, VP3 happenings by

Pause, Patience, and Jesus’ Way

What opens us more deeply to growth and faithfulness in Christ? What seems to hinder our formation as persons and communities in Christ? 

I have been pondering Jesus’ way in light of these two questions lately, in preparation for our upcoming VP3 Gathering in Kelowna, October 5-7. If these questions are currently important to you, consider making your way to beautiful British Columbia. Join us and our conversation.  

The element of Jesus’ slow and patient way with others has resurfaced in my mind in the past few weeks. Not by any means new thoughts, but perhaps something of my own pace, driven by my current occupations and preoccupations, has prompted a pause. Slow down. 

Big picture, our cultural preoccupation with speed, efficiency, and control—“Do everything faster!”—leads me to notice Jesus’ unhurried way with others. Our constant search for shortcuts and “getting the biggest bang for our buck” does not condition Jesus as he moves through the world. This slow, patient mentoring unfolds most clearly in the way Jesus treats his disciples.  Read More

CategoriesSpiritual Conversation by

The Incognito God

“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.”1
—C.S. Lewis

 

Let’s think about that: some days or even weeks, I feel I have successfully evaded the presence of God—not by design or intention; instead, it seems I walked different streets or sang different songs, or simply didn’t see or hear or feel his presence.  You have felt that too; I know it. God incognito. What now?

 

I understand: it sounds like I blame you (me) for missing the presence of God. Instead, let’s hear the invitation in some words below—from scripture and from wise writers and friends.  They tell me that God desires relationship with us when we seek him, not just answers to all our questions. They invite us to align our expectations—to accept that, for now, we see only partially. To become detectives of divinity. To move at the pace of being known. And to listen to our own stories for evidence of God’s presence. Read More

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I Lift Up My Eyes: Psalm 121

 

I lift up my eyes to the hills—
 from where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 121:1-2

What are you looking at?

It is an ordinary question—one you ask when a friend suddenly pauses, their attention caught by something you cannot yet see, or when a passenger turns to look back along the highway. We ask, “What are you looking at?” Common, yes, but it may be one of the important spiritual questions with which to begin a day: What will claim my attention in the hours ahead? It is a question to be asked by all of us.

 

For ministry leaders, the question carries particular urgency. Our eyes are trained to notice what needs attention: the unfinished sermon, the struggling congregation, the conflict that will not resolve, the call still unreturned, the budget, the building, the meeting, the grief beneath someone’s composed face. Much of ministry is the holy work of looking closely at what stands before us. But over time, faithful attention can harden into the weary habit of staring only at what is wrong. For the rest of us, we know the busyness that distracts during a typical day of work, groceries, the gas station, bill paying, and dinner preparation.

 

Attention is never merely optical. What holds our gaze eventually lays claim to our imagination, emotions, dreams, and hope. Read More

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A Word to the Wise: You Are Not Finished

Sometimes At the Table is meant to inspire. It is always meant to invite us more deeply into Scripture and into conversations that matter. But every so often, we also need to be challenged—called to account. Today’s “word to the wise” is one of those moments.

Rich, a mentor of mine when I moved from parish ministry to campus ministry, taught me this lesson well. Only a year or two older than I, he retired before I did—but he did so with an attitude. He helped me reimagine this stage of life not as retirement, but as re-deployment.

At the time of my own re-deployment, I assumed I’d be asked to serve on boards or teach classes on campus—or something like that. Truth be told, I didn’t know what. But one of the best questions a mentor can ask is short and piercing: “What’s next?” It sparks anticipation, stirs curiosity, and invites us to wonder about the season ahead.

In my case, the message was clear: I wasn’t finished. In the Kingdom of God, retirement is never the end of our calling.  Read More

CategoriesSpiritual Conversation by

You’re not listening

It was one of those weeks—cluttered with noise, burdened with endless to-dos, stretched thin with distraction. Sitting alone at the large wooden table in our familiar coffee shop on Whidbey Island, I found myself lost in the swirl of my own busyness. The world hummed around me, yet I felt distant, untethered.

 

Then came the question—gentle yet piercing, one that refused to be ignored. 

“Are you following Jesus?  Are you truly a follower?”[1]

 

I knew the answer I wanted to give, the one my heart longed to be true. But honesty whispered otherwise. 

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Interlude Questions Matter

In a recent blog, Rob (Loane) talked to us about connecting the “answers” with questions. For many years, my work put a grant in our hands that allowed us to develop campus ministry leaders in two ways: leadership practices and spirituality. As a group, we loved times for “shop talk,” when we opened the floor for new ideas, innovations, and methods for spiritual formation on college campuses. The ideas would flow, copious notes would be taken, and many of us returned home with a “plug and play” mentality about what we heard from our peers.  

 

Over time, however, we needed to remember that best practices are “answers” or “responses” to questions that emerged out of local issues, contextual problems, or partial “solutions” in vivo, that is, in life lived on a campus in Indiana, upstate New York, urban LA or Minneapolis, small town Kentucky or metropolitan Dallas. We discovered that “answers” in the form of new programs or practices are not universal but specific to place, setting, staffing, ecclesial identity, and practical movements in the story of the ministry itself.  

 

A new campus pastor might bring something new to the table that a long-time pastor might have tried years before. A large staff team might initiate multiple complex plans that a campus pastor with a part-time assistant could not. Once again, questions matter.

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CategoriesFamilies, Spiritual Conversation by

When autocorrect got theology right

The calls started coming about a month ago. “Jerry is having trouble breathing; they’ve taken him to the hospital for oxygen.”  Jerry is my older brother. During the late stages of pregnancy, my mother experienced complications that caused the loss of oxygen flow to his brain, resulting in life-altering mental capacities for him. He was what we might call today “mentally challenged,” what people cruelly called then “retarded.” He was, in other words, a survivor of a birth-related brain injury.

In truth, his abilities were challenged, causing him to be placed in the “special” class and mainstreamed in public education in suburban Chicago. It was a class comprised of many people with various forms of disability, only to be ridiculed because they might not be articulate in speech, might laugh at the wrong time, be unable to complete sentences, drool, or have bodies with spastic motions at unexpected moments. Because they were “special,” they were often treated badly on the playground, in the hallways, or just walking with us through town; mothers even “protected” their own children when they saw Jerry and me walking the sidewalks. More than once I even told mothers to “shut up,” as they called him “retard.” “Shut up” was a phrase not allowed in our family home.

Jerry was a special needs child. His life changed within only a few months of what appeared to be an otherwise normal pregnancy. Until age 16, he was in the public school system, but nothing was offered beyond that age. Eventually, he moved to a group facility in southern Illinois where he lived just short of 50 years. Read More

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Little Walker’s trip to the boardwalk

A story

Little Walker’s favorite place in the world is the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey. If you have ever been to this boardwalk in the summer, you know the extent of the crowds of people – it is exhilarating. For five-year-old Little Walker, with amusement rides and snacks and so many people, a night spent on the boardwalk was his most favorite thing to do. All day long, he told everyone he encountered, “I am going to the boardwalk tonight!” So when dinner was done, and the dishes were all washed and dried, he headed up to “the boards” with his parents and little sister, his aunt and uncle. Little Walker could barely contain himself as he entered the scene: Ferris wheels and boogie boards and flashing billboards, skateboards and strollers, Steel’s fudge and Mack & Manco’s pizza and Shriver’s saltwater taffy, the sounds of the Atlantic Ocean in the background, and wave upon wave upon wave of people. Absolutely wonderful!

But when he smelled that smell–hot caramel popcorn!–and spotted the Johnson Caramel Popcorn shop (his dad’s favorite place on the boardwalk), and excitedly looked back for his dad, but could not find him or anyone else in his family, the whole scene turned on Little Walker. The lights, the noises, the smells, and the faces all began to press in upon him and terrify him. The excitement was gone. Little Walker was lost.  Read More