Mark's Blog

The Day of Atonement, known as Yom Kippur, is the highest holy day of the Jewish calendar.  It begins at sundown on Friday, October 11.  It was the only day of the year when the high priest entered the holy of holies at the temple in Jerusalem. Atoning sacrifices were...

Two weeks ago I left my phone and laptop chargers in my hotel room after checking out of a hotel room.  The next day I found out that I gotten the date wrong for the funeral of a close friend I had agreed to preach at.  These were mistakes of distraction and/or...

I was in the midst of an intense reverie in my living room at home.  I was sixteen years old, a junior in high school. The Tet offensive (February 1968) had just claimed the lives of hundreds of American troops in Vietnam.  At the time I supported America’s war...

We are engaged in spiritual warfare.  So claims the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a loosely organized network of extreme conservative Christian leaders and congregations, which has steadily and stealthily moved from the fringes of our culture into the mix of the...

“Take that necklace off.  It’s un-American”, was the greeting a woman gave me while working as a door-to-door salesman in Indianapolis after my sophomore year in college.  I knocked on thousands of doors that summer. I was always unannounced, and unexpected.  Many...

“I had to hold on for dear life.”  Most of us have said this at one time or another, accompanied with some degree of breathless panic or abject fear.  Many of us can recall situations when we felt that if our grip wasn’t tight enough, we were certain we would fall...

It was perhaps my most embarrassing experience while serving as a bishop.  We were in Canterbury, England in 2008, all 800 of us – bishops from across the world, plus spouses and staff, gathered for a three-week gathering called the Lambeth Conference.  It was not...

“Expectations are resentments under construction,” wrote author Anne Lamott, a phrase which has been quoted many times and which aptly describes many moments in my life.  In recent weeks I have brought my own expectations into various gatherings – some personal, some...

“How do we build bridges across political difference when there is so much misinformation and disinformation coming at people which captures their attention?  How can we have conversations when facts are denied and false narratives become more commonplace?”   This was...