Essays

A collection of reflections shaped by curiosity, conviction, and care. Written for those navigating faith, culture, nature, and meaning in a world that’s always in motion.

Another Semester of Being Useless

Those of us who teach in humanities fields at university face the threshold of every new semester with the sinking feeling that we have dedicated our lives to something “the culture” no longer values. We’re useless, if not downright nefarious.

Third Sunday in Advent: A Sestina

These candlelit evenings, ancient hope glimmers like a gift,
gleams for a moment, then falters, slips to nothing
in the circling of the year, our loves still unsteady, our roots
still shallow, every promise a whisper of moth’s wings and still
pending.

Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World

Katherine Hayhoe is a world-renowned climate scientist, a Christian, and a consummate communicator. This indispensable book covers the facts of climate change, but it focuses on communicating wisely and effectively with others about the climate crisis. (See also Hayhoe’s TED Talk and YouTube channel.)

A Crash Course on Climate Change

The New York Times does excellent reporting on climate. Their handy crash course website is organized and accessible, providing recent statistics and information and answering common questions.

How to Live at the End of the World

But what to do with this whiz-bang of a passage from Mark, where Jesus instructs the disciples about impending doom?

Religion, the Climate Crisis, and Faith Formation

As with the Pew study, PRRI found that religious leadership structures duly release well-meaning statements, and religious people talk a good game about “creation care” and “stewardship,” but many of the faithful are far more influenced in their climate views by their news sources and their politics than by theological motivations or faith communities.

Chronological Loneliness

Distant from my parents’ and their parents’ worlds, scrambling to understand my children’s world, I feel a kind of chronological loneliness. That’s the term I came up with to describe this feeling of floating between.

A Passel of Idiolectical Delights

We’re not talking about a language, or a dialect, or even current slang, but rather those little ways of speaking that are idiosyncratic to a particular person or family unit. In other words, the weird little turns of phrase that only you and maybe your family use. Surely you have some of your own.

United Church of Christ Environmental Justice Ministries

Goodbye to the Books

And I was surprised to find: I felt some grief. Why, for goodness sake? Was The Bit Between My Teeth: A Literary Chronicle of 1950-1965 (from 1965, not surprisingly) somehow personally important to me? It was not.

IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released this summary in March 2023. You can read the Executive Summary for a helpful and readable introduction. This report summarizes the more extensive reports released earlier on the physical science of climate change, on impacts and the need for adaptation, and on mitigation strategies. The website also explains how these reports were created and by whom.