There are voices that echo beyond time, like the hush of wind through cedar trees, or the hush of spirit in solitude. One of those voices for me has always been Howard Thurman — chaplain, mystic, and a man who walked the worn, sacred path between suffering and hope.
Thurman, the first Black chaplain at Boston University, once wrote:
I’ve been to Jerusalem where I saw what some traditions believe was the place of Jesus’ birth and nearby to where they think he was buried. Lots of gold, jewels, silver, and a certain kind of beauty. But I’ve also seen places “off the beaten path” where others imagined birth and burial: I am moved by those places. No gold, jewels, silver, or “glory,” just terra firma under our feet. We know the stable pictures of the Nativity and we can imagine a huge round stone in front of a cave-like tomb on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Read More
I wasn’t there—when the sky cracked open and the earth groaned beneath the weight of what it witnessed that violent day. I wasn’t there. I ran. I hid. I let fear throttle the breath from my chest while the one I swore to follow was nailed to splintered wood like an animal, his body a ragged ruin of torn flesh and exposed bone. Say what you will about loyalty—I lost mine somewhere between the first lash of the whip and the moment they rammed that cursed thorn crown onto his head. I should have been there. But I wasn’t there. Fear, not faith, took control of my steps. Read More
St. Teresa of Avila (d. 1582) did not write explicitly about the season of Lent, but the Lenten themes that we have been exploring over the past month and a half weave their way through her writing. In this extended Lenten At the Table blog, I will summarize six major themes of her spirituality.
A recent book makes the claim: “We live in an age of the celebrity.” [1] It offers an alternative for our culture, which is to return to what I like to call “centuries-deep” teachings and insights from the great cloud of witnesses in the history of churches around the world.
One of those is Dr. Teresa, the first of only four women to be named a “doctor of the church.” Teresa was a 16th-century Spanish nun, mystic and spiritual writer, and reformer of her Carmelite order. She made it her mission to restore contemplative forms to this order in the Catholic Church.
Two of our final two portraits for Lent will be presented for the diversity they bring in their understanding and practice of Lent. Walter Brueggeman is first and foremost a professor of Old Testament studies. Kathleen Norris is a poet and spiritual writer, both of whom we need to listen to. I have read nearly all their published works, so, I’ll call them by name: Walter teaches us that Lent is misunderstood as a season for giving up. He calls us to a practice of taking on. I first used his stellar book, The Prophetic Imagination, as the text for undergrads at a college in South Dakota.
Walter teaches us that Lent is not just about giving up things (like fasting or self-denial) but also about taking on—practices that align with God’s justice and renewal. He emphasizes that Lent is a time for transformation—moving beyond personal sacrifice to actively engaging in acts of mercy, justice, and prophetic imagination. He turns our ears to Jeremiah, the prophet, who spoke fiercely against being neutral about God and God’s ways.
Jeremiah gives witness to the real presence of God who has capacity to bring newness to otherwise broken social realities marked by violence, division, animosity, ethnic hatred, and hostile political partisanship.
In her book Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor challenged Christians to pause and embrace Lent as a season of “darkness.” True, Lent comes in spring, perhaps just before Daylight Savings Time, but she means something far deeper when she speaks of darkness. For her, Lent is an invitation to explore the parts of life and faith that are often overlooked, avoided, and clothed in our doubts, fears, and uncertainties.
Like Peterson, Taylor is a realist who understands how easy it is to hold on to easy answers when faced with the mystery of our faith. Her practices include silence and contemplation by which we dwell in the “shadows,” where she believes God often speaks profoundly. For her, Lent is reframed not as a season of deprivation and letting go as much as a period of deep discovery and growth by which we face what is within.
Last week I introduced Henri Nouwen and Lent as a journey of the heart; this week let’s consider Eugene Peterson and Lent as a season of reorientation.
I met Eugene Peterson at a campus ministry gathering in the early 90s. I took classes from him and consider him my spiritual father, though we had only a handful of times together. Lent, as an annual remembrance, was, like other practices, a time for reorienting one’s life toward God’s kingdom. He emphasized what he might even have called the countercultural nature of Lent by which Christians learn to resist the pull and lure of consumerism and self-centered living. Read More
Henri Nouwen, known for his deep insights into spiritual life, saw Lent as a time for inner transformation—a journey of the heart. He often emphasized the importance of vulnerability, inviting followers of Jesus to step away from the distractions that impede their souls and examine their hearts honestly. Nouwen described Lent as a journey of returning to God, very much in the thread of the story of the prodigal son.
He first saw a reproduction of Rembrandt’s painting entitled, “The Return of the Prodigal Son” on a colleague’s office door. It may be impossible to explain the lifelong impact that experience had on Henri’s life. The image stirred something deeply profound in his heart. Read More
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor killed by the Nazis for his resistance to Hitler, understood Jesus’ primary message: “The first service one owes to others in a community involves listening to them. Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s Word, the beginning of love for others is learning to listen to them, to their story, to their words…We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them.” [1]
As our biblical grounding image, I want us to start with a text we call the Transfiguration. You know it, I am sure: Jesus standing with two icons of the Jewish faith, Moses and Elijah, and three who would become icons of the Christian faith: Peter, James, and John. As usual, Peter did a lot of unnecessary talking. Luke described it as Peter “not knowing what he said.” The contrast was another voice, a memorable word from the cloud, the voice of Abba, who thundered what may have been a rebuke to Peter but gave a word for all who hunger and thirst to go deep. Do you remember the sentence? “This is my Son, my Chosen…” and then three words to burn into our hearts, “…listen to him.” (Luke 9:35) Read More
I have been inspired recently by Emily P. Freeman’s words when she wrote,
“I have a vision of a generation of believers who understand that the goal of life is Jesus and all the ways he wants to offer himself both to us and through us to the world.”
Yes, yes, yes!
Beginning with Jesus’ earliest words to the men and women who would become his disciples, “Follow me,” Read More
"Practical. Insightful. In my 50 years as a pastor, I’ve read many of these. This is THE best. I ordered 12 to give as gifts.”
