Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-being-a-neighbor/
Jul 20 2016
Robert Snow was the captain of homicide at the Indianapolis police department. He was a sharp, intelligent, respected—and respectable—man, skeptical both by nature and by professional habit. He didn’t know this was all beginning to change for him when one day at a party, a colleague struck up a conversation about past lives. She had …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-life-as-a-dream/
May 17 2016
It has been months since I posted any thoughts on this site—months since I’ve written anything. Much has happened in the past couple of years that kept me away, and I will tell you in a few minutes, but let me start with something else. Last Saturday, on NPR’s “This American Life,” David Rakoff described …
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Jun 24 2015
A couple of weeks ago my parish priest said another homily on the joy of being adopted children of God. It is a frequent sentiment in the church and a concept older than Christianity itself, and yet these days, whenever I hear it, I find that something about it doesn’t sit right with me. I …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-being-adopted-by-god/
Apr 17 2015
We are uncertain. Much of the time we are afraid. We endure pain and grieve, mourning for lives unlived. We huddle in rooms that feel safe with our loved ones, and there we thread through our fingers the most precious of our memories and the most fragile of questions. Sometimes we are desperate, sometimes hopeful. …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-peace-with-us/
Mar 18 2015
Trust in the Lord with all your heart And lean not on your own understanding. — Proverbs 3:5-6 These are not easy times. Every day we open our eyes to a world of bad news, a struggle for survival, and apocalyptic expectations. Mid-century-style Stalinism is taking over Russia, the Seventh Century is taking over the …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-the-lent-of-life/
Feb 23 2015
What does a three-thousand-year-old murder have to do with a 20th-century revolution? What does a queen of ancient Israel have to do with Stalinism, slavery, or internment camps? The interplay of two eternal questions humanity has asked, nurtured, abused, distorted, ignored, and bounced off each other since the dawn of its consciousness: When something goes …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-who-is-to-blame/
Jan 26 2015
Hello again, my friends. Some of you, my precious regular readers, have noticed that my blog has been on hiatus for the past few weeks. I have been insanely busy, as have all who work in the Church during the Christmas season, and I have been insanely tired, and I’ve been unwell – but I’d …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-jonah-and-me/
Nov 04 2014
Continued from “On serpent and the cross. Part I.” You must admit, one can hardly keep from eisegesis when one is a Christian holding Numbers 21. “Eisegesis” is reading meaning into the text rather than out of it. The authors of the bronze serpent story didn’t have the Christ in mind, but we discern the …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-serpent-and-cross-part-2/
Oct 18 2014
It’s been a while since I’ve engaged in pure, unadulterated biblical commentary, but it is time. So much of life’s chaos and din has been converging on me without pause for so many weeks that I must put it all away—for today—and open the Bible and immerse myself completely in the questions that seem to …
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Jul 14 2019
On being a neighbor
July 14, 2019
Today’s Gospel is the parable of the Good Samaritan. Everybody knows it, and if you’re a Christian and happened to go to church today, you most likely also heard a sermon on the subject. And chances are, that sermon included some sort of reference—direct or obscure, scholarly or passionate, reflection on conciliation or call to …
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