An excerpt from Madeleine L’Engle’s 1969 poem, “Lines Scribbled on an Envelope while Riding the 104 Broadway Bus”: There is too much pain I cannot understand I cannot pray… Here I am and the ugly man with beery breath beside me reminds me that it is not my prayers that waken your concern, my Lord; my prayers, my intercessions are not to ask for your love for all your lost and lonely ones, your sick and sinning souls, but mine, my love, my acceptance of your love. Your love for the woman sticking her umbrella and her expensive parcels into my ribs and snarling, “Why don’t you watch whe ..read more

  When I pushed through the crowd, jostled, bumped, elbowed by the curious who wanted to see what everyone else was so excited about, all I could think of was my pain and that perhaps if I could touch him, this man who worked miracles, cured diseases, even those as foul as mine, I might find relief. I was tired from hurting, exhausted, revolted by my body, unfit for any man, and yet not let loose from desire and need. I wanted to rest, to sleep without pain or filthiness or torment. I don’t really know why I thought he could help me when all the doctors with all their knowledge had left ..read more

  You are so beautiful and I am a fool to be in love with you is a theme that keeps coming up in songs and poems. There seems to be no room for variation. I have never heard anyone sing I am so beautiful and you are a fool to be in love with me, even though this notion has surely crossed the minds of women and men alike. You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool is another one you don't hear. Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful. That one you will never hear, guaranteed. For no particular reason this afternoon I am listening to Johnny Hartman whose dark voice can curl around th ..read more

  Welcome to SALT’s “Theologian’s Almanac,” a weekly selection of important birthdays, holidays, and other upcoming milestones worth marking — specially created for a) writing sermons and prayers, b) creating content for social media channels, and c) enriching your devotional life. For the week of Sunday, June 30: June 30 is the anniversary of a formal public debate over the theory of evolution at Oxford University in England, held by the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species, had just appeared the previous year, to immediate controve ..read more

  Sixth Week after Pentecost (Year B): Mark 5:21-43 and Psalm 130 Big Picture: 1) We are almost exactly in the middle of an eight-part portrait of Jesus’ early public ministry, exploring a series of chronologically selected passages from the Gospel of Mark. The outlines of Jesus’ mission are becoming clear: as we saw last week, he’s just calmed a storm at sea, and since then, he’s healed a Gentile man afflicted with an “unclean spirit” (Mark 5:1-20). Both of these events portray the expansive, surprising, barrier-breaking nature of Jesus’ healing, saving work — and this week’s passage co ..read more

  Welcome to SALT’s “Theologian’s Almanac,” a weekly selection of important birthdays, holidays, and other upcoming milestones worth marking — specially created for a) writing sermons and prayers, b) creating content for social media channels, and c) enriching your devotional life. For the week of Sunday, June 23: June 24 is Midsummer Night or “Midsummer Eve,” a time of revelry also known as St. John’s Eve, the day before John the Baptist’s birthday. St. John is the patron saint of beekeepers, and this time of year, many beehives are brimming with honey. In fact, this month’s full moon ..read more

  Sweet Jesus, talking his melancholy madness, stood up in the boat and the sea lay down, silky and sorry. So everybody was saved that night. But you know how it is when something different crosses the threshold — the uncles mutter together, the women walk away, the young brother begins to sharpen his knife. Nobody knows what the soul is. It comes and goes like the wind over the water — sometimes, for days, you don’t think of it. Maybe, after the sermon, after the multitude was fed, one or two of them felt the soul slip forth like a tremor of pure sunlight before exhaustion, that wants t ..read more

  Fifth Week after Pentecost (Year B): Mark 4:35-41 and 1 Sam 17:1-49 Big Picture: 1) We’re in the midst of an eight-part portrait of the early phase of Jesus’ public ministry, exploring eight chronologically selected passages from Mark’s Gospel. Jesus has emerged on the scene as a celebrated healer and teacher — and now, with this dramatic story, the vast scope of his work comes into view. 2) Mark was likely written during or just after a period of intense, almost unimaginable upheaval in first-century Palestine, near the year 70 CE: a Jewish revolt against the Roman imperial occupation ..read more

  Welcome to SALT’s “Theologian’s Almanac,” a weekly selection of important birthdays, holidays, and other upcoming milestones worth marking — specially created for a) writing sermons and prayers, b) creating content for social media channels, and c) enriching your devotional life. For the week of Sunday, June 16: June 16 is Father’s Day, the third Sunday in June each year, a holiday with roots in two early-twentieth-century occasions: a commemoration for fathers killed in the December 1907 explosion at a West Virginia coal company, and a 1910 celebration inspired by a Civil War veteran ..read more

  Who ever saw the mustard-plant, wayside weed or tended crop, grow tall as a shrub, let alone a tree, a treeful of shade and nests and songs? Acres of yellow, not a bird of the air in sight. No, He who knew the west wind brings the rain, the south wind thunder, who walked the field-paths running His hand along wheatstems to glean those intimate milky kernels, good to break on the tongue, was talking of miracle, the seed within us, so small we take it for worthless, a mustard-seed, dust, nothing. Glib generations mistake the metaphor, not looking at fields and trees, not noticing pa ..read more