Spiritual Economics 101
Recently, our health-care insurance company sent us an upbeat notice stating that our family was now eligible to fill our prescriptions through mail, a switch that would presumably save them and us some money.
At Last a Retraction
Like many a minister, I’ve preached some very fine sermons that I can no longer recall and some roundly mediocre ones that I cannot seem to forget. Yet there is only one I truly regret delivering, not because it was rotten or wordy or diffuse, but rather because it was just wrong. I remember this sermon often, with a curious admixture of mortification and gratitude.
Wresting a Blessing
Now that summer’s nearly ended, I find myself nostalgic for the start of it. Nothing else signals the full swing of summer to me as much as the Blessing of the Fleet. While other children of New England will readily recognize this ritual, for the uninitiated: it involves all sailboats, trawlers, and other vessels that float upon the waters getting bedecked and festooned and staging a parade past a member of the clergy who imparts a blessing on each and every one of them.
A Season For Shalom
The first time I stepped into a sukkah hut, I was a new student enrolled at an ecumenical divinity school across the street from a Jewish theological seminary where we could cross-register for classes. Although my school was avowedly Christian, it prided itself on graduating students who were Jewishly literate, and our neighbors across the street were often enlisted to assist us in this endeavor.
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