If someone who had never heard the story of Jesus were to ask about His origins, we would, I suspect, begin with the story of His annunciation and birth and end with the story of His resurrection and ascension. While that does capture His life, that’s not how the Gospels either begin or end His story. The story of Jesus and the meaning of Christmas can only really be understood by looking at where Jesus came from, His family tree, and by looking at how His story has continued in history. Indeed, that’s how the Gospels tell His story.

God has given us two churches, one is found everywhere and the other is found at select places. Some of us prefer one of these and struggle with the other, but both are sacred places where God can be found and worshipped.

It’s no secret that today there’s been a massive drop-off in church attendance. Moreover that drop-off is not paralleled by the same widespread growth in atheism and agnosticism.

It’s not only love that makes the world go round. Resentment too is prominent in stirring the drink. In so many ways our world is drowning in resentment. Everywhere you look, it seems, someone is bitter about something and breathing out resentment. 

Ancient Greece expressed much of its psychological and spiritual wisdom inside its myths. The Greeks didn’t intend these to be taken literally or as historical, but as metaphor and as an archetypal illustration of why life is as it is and how people engage life both generatively and destructively. 

Sometimes certain texts in the Bible make you wonder: Is this really the Word of God? Why is this text in Scripture? What’s the lesson here? 

Anthropologists tell us that father hunger, a frustrated desire to be blessed by our own fathers, is one of the deepest hungers in the world today, especially among men. Millions of people sense that they have not received their father’s blessing. Robert Bly, Robert Moore, Richard Rohr and James Hillman, among others, offer some rich insights into this. 

Although I grew up in a loving, safe and nurturing family and community, one of the dominant memories of my childhood and teenage years is that of being restless and somehow discontent. My life always seemed too small, too confined, a life away from what was important in the world. I was forever longing to be more connected to life and I feared that other people didn’t feel that way and that I was somehow singular and unhealthy in my restlessness.