the long way home (coming soon)

The backbone of my morning and evening meditations and prayer has become the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. It has taken me a while to figure out how to use it (with a lot of help from a friend), and I’m still clumsily trying to make my way along, but it is an amazing [...]

I was updating my Author page on this site tonight, and I was reminded once more of this quote that struck me so powerfully by poet Joe Weil.  It’s from a great interview posted on Patrol Magazine a while back.  I wrote about it when I originally first found it almost exactly a year ago. [...]

Okay, now for a personal post. I usually don’t do these, but some encouragement/wisdom from others might help. I don’t know what exactly has been the cause, but the past few weeks have seen my desire to write and effect change rise to a level I’ve previously never known, only to be brought [...]

On this beautiful White Christmas (at least where I’m at), for those precious few of you that will make it online today, I wanted to put up a hymn I wrote a about a year ago.  I pray this encourages you and creates anticipation for the Advent that is to come. Merry Christmas.
O Sovereign, [...]

In honor of this Advent/Christmas Eve, I decided to repost an article on Reform & Revive written almost exactly a year ago by my good friend (and incredible photographer) David Schrott.  He is an amazing writer (and here) and an even more amazing friend.  This article reflects much on the year that brought the writing [...]

Art by Julia Meolgrana
If you have about an hour or so, I wanted to plug several articles and a sermon.  The sermon is from Matt Chandler (his blog can be found here).  It is a message he gave during a chapel service at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  There is both audio and video available.  The [...]

As of a couple of weeks ago, I am an in-covenant member at Liberti Church: South Philly. One of the reasons I am writing this is to inform those at Epiphany that don’t know this yet. I thought a good number of people knew, but I’m getting more and more texts and messages from people [...]

This was a journal entry of mine from yesterday.  Yes, this is how some of my entries look.  I’m also in the process of writing a new album called Skeptics & Saints and this might end up being one of the songs, so consider this a preview.
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[photo by David Schrott]
We’re done.  I promise.  Really.  I just wanted to do two things: First, offer this directory, or “Table of Contents” to the Beauty Series for a clear organization of the parts so people can navigate it more easily.  Secondly, below you’ll find not only the full audio and complete manuscript based off [...]

The next post after this will be the last in this series.  But today, we are finishing up the section on how we respond to Beauty.  As I stated earlier, there are two fundamental ways we respond to Beauty: we contemplate it, and we enjoy it.  But, within the enjoyment piece, I think there are [...]