Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal priest, teacher, and author of thirteen books, among them the memoir Leaving Church and the New York Times–bestselling Learning to Walk in the Dark. From 1998 until her retirement last year, Taylor held an endowed chair in religion and philosophy at Piedmont College. She has also served on the…

Yesterday, a man might have killed me. Both receptionists were away from the counter when I entered the waiting room for a physical therapy appointment. The waiting room, shared by several different offices, was lonely in mid-morning with only one man wearing all black and headphones sitting slightly hunched. I took a seat as far…

In the beginning, when God was creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was a desolate waste. Chaos. Smoking rubble. Like after a war. Our beginning, we Bible readers should understand, was post-apocalyptic. That’s what I tell the guys in jail, as a regular chaplain there, when someone pipes up now and then with…

As part of our tourist rounds in Chicago my wife and I visited the Art Institute, which is far too large to take in in a single day. As happens every time I go to a large museum, by the time we walked out I was in a state of melancholy existential astonishment. One installation…

Contingency…subject to chance…uncertain…right down to the molecular level. — Christian Wiman It is one of the most confounding paradoxes of parenting: do we show our children, or do we tell them? From that question, of course, the nuance and degree of difficulty increase rapidly. When and how to show? When and how to tell? Watching…

Early on Friday morning, the first full day of my recent trip to Israel with Congregation Beth Ha Tephila, Asheville, NC, six of the forty-three participants gathered on a momentarily quiet Metzitzim Beach near the Tel Aviv port for twenty minutes of mindfulness practice. When we finished, we noted, just to the south of us,…

For the past several days—until today, alas—we’ve been having a spell of entirely uncharacteristic weather in the Washington, D.C. area. The days have been in the 70s and the nights, pure bliss: in the high 60s, a temperature for open windows and a thick breeze that feels like it’s straight from the Atlantic, and I…

The day is hot and musty but everyone is celebrating. After all, everyone can enjoy a small town fireworks display, right? I used to think so. But in revelatory moments, the sheen of this small town—with its beautiful park and festivities—is pulled back to reveal what was always present. Life isn’t always so bright for…

The line lurched forward one vehicle at a time, halogen halos radiating from headlights. Although it was eleven o’clock at night, I could not help but think of the funeral processions I saw as a boy, cars coursing through town in the daytime with lights aglow. As I sat in the drive-thru lane at Taco…

I’ve never really been into crosses.  Like fire hydrants or Starbucks, there are so many, I don’t even see them. Sermons or songs that ask me to meditate on the cross might as well ask me to meditate on the church snack table because that’s where my mind wanders as I wait for the cross,…