When I began seminary, one of the first things I was asked to read was an essay by Simone Weil. It advised that, in our studies, we should always go slow and pay attention. It’s somewhat of a cruel joke, given that the next four years involved being so overwhelmed with assignments that such a thing was impossible. Still, the …
What We Leave Behind (Program and Sermon)
Program Sermon We just went on vacation. We went to a place in the Hill Country, to a little plot of land that has been in Lisa’s family for almost a hundred years. The Hagy Camp sits on a bluff above the Western fork of the Frio River, about six miles north of Leakey, Texas. Lisa’s ancestors started going there …
A Little Bit of Death, but So Much Life
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. There’s this naked lady living in a garden with her boyfriend, also naked. A talking snake tells her to eat an apple, so she does, and things go downhill fast. The God of the garden knows they’ve been bad, so they lie about it, blame each other, and get kicked out. Not …