Writing

I ended 2025 as I have ended nearly every year for the last decade, save the two Decembers we lived in Bangladesh, at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. The place itself has become part of my prayer. The towering white concrete columns rise like sentinels of silence. The wooden beams stretch overhead, an ark, a cradle, holding me. Blue and purple light spills through stained glass, and Mary and Jesus look back at me from the rose window, steady and familiar witnesses to this l

Christmas has a way of arriving with great fanfare and then leaving us very quickly with silence. The carols fade. The decorations come down. The world moves on. And yet the Church, stubborn and wise, insists that Christmas is not a single day but a season, a span of time meant not just for celebration, but for dwelling. For staying with what has come into the world long enough to begin to notice how it changes us. I know my own Christmas celebrations were delightful, even if

This week feels different as we turn the corner toward Christmas. It isn't lost on me that I preached Advent 4 on the Winter Solstice. We endured the longest night, the most darkness of the year - and then we turned toward the light that is to come. As I prepared this sermon, I realized how near God feels when we pay attention to the small things—the names spoken over us, the stories we carry, and the hidden places where God’s presence presses close enough to steady us. Ad