NEWS

Monday, January 5, 2026 Happy Monday and Happy New Year, my friends! When I was in college my friend, Lara (now the Rev. Lara Case Halsey) and I decided that we were going to found a retreat center. It would probably be out in the woods somewhere so we could offer an environment for peaceful reflection as well as respite from the world. Ever the pragmatist, Lara was already thinking of the business plan while idealist me was dreaming of founding a monastery and what the worsh

Monday, December 29, 2025 Happy Monday and Happy Holidays, my friends! There’s a certain magic connected with the winter holidays and often the best place to find it is in the eyes of a child who still believes in Santa Claus. For me that’s my nephew, Jack. On Christmas Eve we continued a tradition started by my brother-in-law’s dad of feasting on Chinese food and then opening presents among the six of us. After presents and dinner, we drove around Urbana looking at Christmas

Monday, December 22, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! Have you read or watched O. Henry’s classic story “The Gift of the Magi?” A married couple, husband and wife, each decide to buy a special gift for the other for Christmas. The husband sells his pocket watch to buy decorative combs for his wife’s hair. The wife sells her hair in order to buy a proper watch chain for her husband’s watch. The moral of the story is that they each cared so much for the other as to sell their mos

Monday, December 15, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! I apologize that this present season has caused me to be unable to write and publish Monday Moments as regularly as in the past, but I’m happy to be able to write something for you today. At Blue Ocean Faith Columbus, the church I pastor, we’re reading Living Buddha, Living Christ  by the Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hahn. As the title implies, Nhat Hahn writes about the similarities and differences between Buddhism and Ch

Monday, November 17, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! I live next to a historic brick school. When it was first built, over 100 years ago, it was the town’s high school. Through subsequent changes and renovations, it has served different groups of students and now hosts students in grades K-5. This morning, I watched one of the students bolt down the sidewalk, up the stairs to the building’s front lawn, across the lawn, and up the stairs into the building. Arms flailing, book b

Monday, November 10, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! Like most pastors, I plan out the themes for my sermons at least several weeks in advance. Yesterday, I preached the second in a four-Sunday series on the Ten Commandments. For Advent, I’m planning to preach on the first two chapters of the Gospel according to Luke over the course of the four Sundays. In each case, I explored which translation or translations of the Bible would be the best to use given how familiar these pas

Monday, November 3, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! I spent a few hours on Saturday reading some of the past Monday Moments as I continue working on a project of turning over 200 reflections into a book. As I read through pieces I wrote several years ago, I recognize which ideas have changed and even how my writing style has grown and developed. There are clear contenders for inclusion in the book and others which aren’t bad, but perhaps not up to the level of republishing (th

Monday, October 27, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! If you’ve been following along with developments in the life of our LOVEboldly community, you know that financial constraints, many the secondary and tertiary fruits of the present moment in our history, have required me to reduce my hours and have affected our overall capacity to keep all operations the same as before. One sign of this was the lack of Monday Moment last week when I simply didn’t have the time to write it. It

Monday, October 13, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! My aunt loved details. She enjoyed planning events, working through all the details...

Monday, October 6, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! Growing up Roman Catholic, visits from the diocesan [1] bishop were special occasions...

Monday, September 29, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! As Siobhan and I continue recording episodes for the second season of “Coming Out...

Monday, September 22, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! As begin living into the new reality of working a reduced and hourly schedule for...

Monday, September 15, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! I spent most of last week engaged in anti-violence, specifically anti-political...

Monday, September 8, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! Our chaplain at Sewanee, the Very Rev. Tom Macfie, was a fan of Fredrick Buechner and...

Monday, September 1, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! Perhaps one of the most popular passages in the Bible, to the point that some people...

Monday, August 25, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! One of the church spaces that has often and historically been a haven for LGBTQIA+...

Monday, August 18, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! Several weeks ago, I was supposed to attend the wedding celebration for two close...

Monday, August 11, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! Recently, I read a special issue of Cross Currents dedicated to the Doctrine of...

Monday, August 4, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! If you are not called or not in a position to regularly write and deliver sermons and...

Monday, July 28, 2025 Happy Monday, my friends! One of the constant refrains we hear and advice we’re given is that we need to get out of...