Bil Aulenbach A longtime friend who was a member of our church before she moved away to Oklahoma still periodically sends me provocative articles. When I taught classes, I always loved it when she was there, along with a couple of others, because they were doubters and questioners. They were unafraid to ask tough questions and hammer … Read more
One morning in June 2013, Annie and I were in Ecuador volunteering at a senior center in Quito. Then we took a bus to a rough barrio, on top of a steep hill, to work at an after-school program for 180 children until five in the evening. After we got home that night, as we … Read more
As I laid sleepless in a hospital bed a week ago, a question kept bouncing around my head: How could seventy-seven million Americans vote for DT? (I have a difficult time even saying his name.) I know all seventy-seven million have the same information I do. Here’s what I came up with: Trump is a … Read more
Several different versions of one of Jesus’s healing miracles are found in Matthew 8:5–13, Luke 7:1–10, and John 4: 46b–54. All three versions take place in the town of Capernaum. Matthew and Luke place Jesus in that city situated on the north end of the Sea of Galilee, reputedly the headquarters of Jesus’s ministry. John … Read more
Sometimes people are confused when I talk about Maundy Thursday. Some think I don’t know how to pronounce Monday, and others have no idea what the Maundy part refers to. First, let’s look at the history of the word and holiday. The word maundy comes from the Latin word mandatum, which means “to command,” but … Read more
I received an email from the alumni office of my high school, the Episcopal Academy (EA), inviting me to a reunion of the Southern California alumni. It would happen in Santa Monica, on the evening of March 13, 2025. Suddenly, I realized 2025 is the seventy-fifth anniversary of my graduation from high school. That’s a … Read more
After a hospital procedure, I was required to stay overnight, lying on my back the whole night. I couldn’t sleep, so I wrote and rewrote this blog post in my head until 5:30 a.m., when a woman came to draw blood. Because I could write nothing down, I found myself repeating the same list, so … Read more
What do the Easter Bunny and resurrected Jesus have in common? The obvious answer is Easter. My answer is that there is no Easter Bunny nor dead Jesus un-deading. Some background: There are about twenty stories, or Gospels, about the life of Jesus. Only three of them, Matthew, Luke, and John, talk about a resurrected … Read more
The four Gospels tell eight different stories about Jesus healing blind folks. Are these eight different healings or just one healing told eight different times with different circumstances? My take is that none of the stories are true, but inside each story is a great truth. But first, a little background: We have a daughter … Read more
I promised I wouldn’t inundate my readers with all the negative news until I saw some rays of light and hope. For a couple of weeks, I thought I saw some positive news. One was from Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who said, “We are clear that President Trump is a danger … Read more