It was Christmas of 2008 that my feet began to hurt in a weird way. It took some months to figure out that I had neuromas (cysts on the nerve) in each foot. Last September I spent most of my daughter’s wedding barefoot; the excruciating pain eventually had me begging for surgery in October. The neuromas were three times the size that the surgeon usually removes. The medical term used to describe them was “bad-ass.”

But the one incision never quite healed, and February 28 it took 8 hours for infection to turn my foot into what my daughter later said looked like a bruised grapefruit. That night I spent on the couch weeping in agony, unable to touch it down, scooting or crawling when I absolutely had to move. I never felt so alone in my life. In the early morning, a friend took me to the doctor, and on his order, immediately to the emergency room. So began my first week in the hospital, and another surgery to lance and drain and pack, and days of IV antibiotics.Read more

Against a brooding, wine-dark backdrop, what’s going on in the painting is at first difficult to make out. A spotless white tablecloth rewards an unseen light source, showcasing a meal in the offing. Then you see Christ the Lord, facing you, eyes closed in prayer, hand outstretched, giving thanks over the meal. Then gradually, first one, then another, disciple, and a third, a server, materialize around the Christ. Finally, it dawns on you that all three of them are registering a surprising recognition that is standing everything they thought they knew, including reality itself, on end. One man has spread his arms like an eagle, his fingers like a fan; he looks about to take off. The server has the look of one who is saying, what the heck is going on here? Who is this guy? It takes you a little while to make out Man #3, even though he is closest to you. Gradually you see that he has lurched forward in his chair, gripping its arms while he rivets Jesus’ face in eye-opening recognition.Read more

Many professions have an annual convention or conference to attend. Academics have scholarly conferences and societies, meetings whose sole agenda is to read papers, hear papers, and talk about papers. “Ugh!”—I can hear some of you cry! I agree that it’s pretty weird. But it’s the way scholarship moves forward. Scholars grow by proposing and defending theses and eliciting helpful critique. Plus, it’s an amazing benefit to be on the faculty of a college or university that actually picks up the tab for your trip.Read more

“Nobody is going to church,” my daughter told me recently. She was talking about people her age who had all grown up in intensely doctrined and governed churches and schools. “I ask them—do you pray? Do you have your quiet times? They all say, no.”
 
It opened my eyes to something I hadn’t realized. Others her age tell me how uncomfortable church feels, how inauthentic, how the pressure for evangelism was no longer to be tolerated, how the exaltation of a single man’s sermon feels like an abuse of power. Friends and involvements outside of church seem more real. The one kind of church experience that seems genuine, it seems, is liturgical.
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When I moved to Western PA the summer of 2004, I thought I was settling in Center Township. I didn’t realize that I was also settling in Aliquippa. Had I known this at the time, I might have been off-put; as it is, I feel that God was locating me here to be part of his unfolding mission of love for this little corner of his world.Read more

Who am I? I am a juncture of stories, and a story of junctures. I am especially aware of the junctures this week.

Friday was, to the day, the 6th anniversary of my saying yes to the job offer that propelled my uprooting from St. Louis and transplanting to Western Pennsylvania. The multiple tectonic shifts of that time rendered me a different person.Read more

Thanks to a daughter in the band and as an assumed part of life in Western PA, I join a growing number of pals to trek down to University of Pittsburgh home football games. The games take place at the Steelers’ Heinz Field, which affords a spectacular view, of the game and also of the city at the official inception of the Ohio River. With the stadium full to SRO, it's like Pittsburgh's family room: we settle back with old friends and new, visit, and yell.
 
I don’t know how it started, or who is behind it, but I have a new favorite moment in the liturgy of Game Day. I guess it's football’s version of the 7th Inning Stretch that occurs between the 3rd and 4th quarters. What happens at the Pitt game is that over the sound system come the signature opening notes of Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline. At first, my high school memories of dates and of, I guess, one boyfriend in particular were jarred to consciousness with that great throbbing rhythm and then that singer’s rich, husky Neil Diamondishness. But these have been eclipsed by the phenomenon that transpires: The song begins, and the entire stadium rises to its feet, links arms, starts to sway, and together belt out the song with top-of-lung exuberance, word for word (thanks to the Jumbotron). You get to the part, “…reaching out, touching me, touching you,” and everybody gestures that, with 100%, whole-bodied, passion. Then—“Sweet Caroline!”—LET’S  GO PITT!!!!—“The good times never seemed so good”—GO PITT! GO PITT! GO PITT!!!—“I’ve been inclined”—LET’S GO PITT!—…and the musical composition, whatever it meant the first time around, has forever been co-opted for a fresh purpose. We embrace the random intertextuality,  in the cause of team rallying, with the serious playfulness of which college students are the greatest experts. You can see it for yourself on You Tube.Read more

I think that the little word, with, is the most Christian word. What I mean is that Christianity makes sense of it in a way that other religions can’t. For Christianity, with has wonderful ultimacy ; other approaches to life and humanness don’t have the resources to draw on to support it. Christianity alone makes sense of with. So with has about it zesty aura that is profoundly Christian

With implies a balanced togetherness, where individuals, nonhuman or human, sustain dynamic communion without absorption. In fact, if communion turns to absorption—the one absorbing the other—one of the individuals is absorbed, the absorbing individual has become a monster, and communion has been eradicated.

In a religion that professes that reality is ultimately one, one person with another or with a group is only ever a good on the way to something better: absorption. By the same token, in a philosophy that professes that ultimate reality is material (yes, there is something in that sentence that should raise a question: does material profess?), persons in with relationship, either with each other or with the material is dissipated by reduction.

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I keep an unusual photo on my work desk, where I can see it always. It’s a photo of me, just turned fifty, in my jammies and morning-face-blotchiness. I’m looking down and very near, at the little bird perched an inch from my cheek on my shoulder.

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