There is a reason every spiritual tradition on earth invented the congregation. Not the building. Not the institution. The gathering — the intentional assembly of people who have decided, against all the considerable pressures of private life, to show up in the same…
It does not begin at the school. That is the first thing to understand, and the hardest, because the school is where the cameras are. The school is where the names get read aloud at vigils, where the flowers are left at the…
There is a conversation that happens in faith communities all over America, in fellowship halls and pastoral offices and parking lots after services, that almost never gets said out loud. It is the conversation about the household where something is wrong. Where the…