The older I get, the more obvious it becomes to me that thought processes I believed were rooted in cool, carefully constructed logic are in fact rooted in intuition and “feeling.” I respect the mind as much as ever, maybe moreso. But I am aware that no human being has or ever will think about issues of self-identity or meaning […]

Contrarian. Me. When someone loathes a theology book, I am immediately made curious to read it. When someone tells me, for instance, that liberation theology is just Marxism dressed up in religious rhetoric, I have to find out for myself. When someone says so-and-so “cannot be a Christian, because they believe [fill in the blank],” I have to find out […]

I have known Hoda Elsharkawi for some time, introduced to her via my cousin Karen who herself converted to Islam just 3 months before the horrors of 9/11/01. Hoda, her husband, and their children live near Boston. As someone who is Muslim, American, and a Bostonian, I believe Hoda offers a unique voice many Christians in America ought to consider. […]

My wife Carol told me about Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death-by-heroin at the age of only 46. Her voice trembled. Not a follower of Hollywood overall, she has tracked Hoffman through any and every movie he appears in. “My favorite actor,” she says simply. For me, Hoffman’s darker roles leave me relatively uninterested, even while I note his stellar ability to […]

For many years, I have held a little known French author as one of the most precious treasures literature ever produced. Francois Mauriac was either a Christian with an existentialist’s heart or an Existentialist with a Christian’s heart, though that description is also misleading. He was a diarist of human suffering. My dear late friend and mentor, Dawn Mortimer, introduced […]

What is it about the hard-boiled detective genre that I like? Well, as an amateur theologian, I think at its best the genre underscores the true state of humankind without God. Now, if you don’t agree with this, perhaps it is because you are a more whole person than I am. Or, perhaps I know something you don’t. Or something. […]

I am daring to post this excerpt because (a) this beautiful book has been largely forgotten, (b) this might help folks to rediscover it, and (c) the message of this particular passage cannot be over-emphasized. When this book — and two companion volumes — were published in the 1970s with Inter-Varsity Press, they were favorites in the JPUSA community and […]

The Manger’s Complaint By Jon Trott (Dec. 2006) Your judgment seems flawed, your reasoning strange To want to live there in my smell and wet straw Your beauty, your wisdom, your heavenly power How can my wooden ugliness hold You without flaw? Your taste in surroundings leaves much unexplained The waste of the beasts, their bleats, brays, and moos How […]

This poem has been a part of my grieving process after my father’s death this past February. My Father’s Passing Can’t come up from under grief’s blue-green the tears unshed, wet-eyed from those that have been Sky too bright, sharp light, my heart over-borne The sea of me filled yet sorrow’s torrents coming I sat there alone with my father […]

Despair’s End Jesus you are my floor You are my walls And you are my door You are my windows And you are my room You are my stairway You are my house And the rock it sits on Don’t matter, boy… let the tears run out and down I’ve nowhere else I need to be hide your head against […]