The Wittenberg Door

love is the most powerful force in the world.

The Bible tells us there is life within the Kingdom—life for us and life for what is around us.

Grief is not a process to work through, a disorder to heal, a condition to treat, or an illness to cure.

That which we most value is often that which most frequently slips into dull repetition.

Poetry must be experienced, and the experience of poetry is itself a means of searching, a kind of hunting, for wisdom.

Rituals are our allies in sorrow. They help us appreciate what brief time we had with our loved ones while acknowledging the years we will face without them.

Like Mary and all Israel waiting for the Messiah, like a mother welcoming a child, we are to “wait for it with patience.”

And so, feeling blessed by the rich experiences of my ministry, I stand at the start of a new year in the dying days of the old one.

Decades of sorrow and searching for clinical evidence have strengthened his resolve, tempered now by experiences that add up to more than disparate bits of empirical data.

He took the words of Jesus to heart—he rarely judged others. When he passed this year, he left a memory not of condemnation, but of mercy.

Mary writes with gentle pathos, patience, and calm—traits common to those who have endured terrible loss. Her observations on life’s many ironies offer catharsis for author and reader alike.

Our need for privacy has been accentuated by the way we live, in which goods and services arrive seemingly out of the ether, things we’ve bought to consume, throw away, or do…