Archives for May 2013

Spiritual Geography

 The first morning I woke up in the Berkshires, in September 1998, my new boss took me on a drive. When we emerged from the woods on the brow of a hill, I literally gasped – at the spread of the mountains, the shades of green, the little houses and barns spread out before us. I […]

Fun With HDR

Some photos I took, playing around with the HDR iPhoto app, TrueHDR, which takes three exposures of a scene, and combines them into one — each level with the best possible lighting and color. In an ordinary shot, you have to choose one level at the primary focus. So, you end up with some crazy […]

You Know You’re A Suburbanite When…

You’re on a bike ride and as you approach your driveway, you reach for the garage door opener that, surely, is clipped to the rim of your helmet…? You know there are NO shortcuts through subdivisions. You never worry that you won’t find a parking place. Your most common pastime seems to be buying more […]

Two Blocks on the West Side

Last week, I went to a chaplain graduation with one of my parishioners (congrats, Cindy!). The program was at Bishop Anderson House, in the Illinois Medical District, so the ceremony was nearby at one of our West Side Episcopal churches, St. Andrew’s, a historically Black church. For some, it’s downtown Chicago that fills them with pride and love […]

My Conversation with “Jacob”

Why Congregations Shouldn’t Work So Hard to Keep Their Young People This is an article I wrote for the Collegeville Institute about “Jacob,” a Jewish kid who composes music on an old Game Boy and plans to stop being “religious” when he goes to college, and impressed me in a conversation we had last week. […]

Suburban Sunset, Late April