The idea that relationships are not a strategy is potent; and the sad commentary proceeds to say that often relationships are seen as a strategy, a means to accomplish great things - except love and relationship are not what is really wanted. We want to appear relational so people will like what we have to offer. It's the difference between wanting a good marriage and loving the person you married.

I've never spoken with an angel, though one time I felt the awesome weight and glory of God's presence in an angel in my bedroom as I kneeled in prayer. I kept my eyes closed, good Baptist that I was at the time, so I never knew if it was an angel. (I now am reasonably confident it was.)

... the Eucharist profoundly enables the grace of God to be received with all its glories and blessings.

Angels are here and around us; perhaps all around us. But we have to have an ear for them and an eye for them, and that only comes when we have the courage and faith to open ourselves to a world inhabited by more than humans and animals. There are angels around us.

We don't ask what the Bible says, we ask what God says to us in that Bible. The difference is a difference between paper and person.

To walk into the Jefferson memorial is to be in a temple of the pure idolatry of reason

The ultimate end of redemption is that we worship God with our whole being and in the whole company of the redeemed.