The Bible is a storybook.  Basically, it is a love story between God and humanity; a story of a covenant made, broken, and renewed, again and again. [...] We need to enlarge our grasp of this love story–to learn it more completely, to understand it more deeply, to possess it more personally, and to live it more fully.  This is a lifelong task.

This is one of my favorite passages from the book Living Faithfully as a Prayer Book People by Episcopal priest and Christian educator John H. Westerhoff.  It gets at both how I read the Bible and how I approach Christian formation and education.  I think that the stories of the Bible as stories are more important than any propositional statements we can make about them, and are both more compelling and more necessary than any lesson or  “moral” we can draw from them.

Image courtesy of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Menlo…

Old Courthouse photo courtesy of www.mo.gov

They say that if you want to know a person’s real priorities in life, look at their checkbook.  “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” and all that (Matthew 6:21, for those who are wondering).  Well, what holds true for individuals often holds true for the state as well, and today Missouri’s leaders are faced with difficult choices about how to spend our money.

The decisions that our state government makes during these next few weeks regarding the 2010 budget will have real and lasting consequences for everyone in the state, but no persons will be more directly affected than the poor, the disabled, children, and the elderly.  In other words, those very people for whom we are most responsible, if we wish to be a just and compassionate society.

Lawmakers and others are pleading poverty for the state, saying that we simply can’t afford all of…

If you ever feel like spirituality  (the lived experience of faith) and theology (the study or knowledge of God, especially as articulated by scholars and intellectuals) inhabit two entirely separate worlds, you might be interested in an upcoming conference.

The Episcopal School for Ministry and the Diocese of Missouri will hold the third annual Making Disciples conference on Saturday, September 13, at Christ Church Cathedral. The conference will feature the Rev. Mark A. McIntosh, Ph.D., on the theme of “Discerning God’s Delight: A Theological Life of Spiritual Discernment.” More information, including registration details, fees, and deadlines, is available on the Dicoese’s website.

The Rev. Dr. McIntosh is an Episcopal priest, scholar, and a longtime theology professor at Loyola University. His numerous books and articles include Christology from Within and Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology. As that subtitle indicates,bringing the spheres of spirituality and theology back into contact with one another is…

Last weekend I had the opportunity to worship at Christ Church Cathedral as part of the Flower Festival weekend. As the celebration of the Holy Eucharist came to a close, the presider, the Rt. Rev. George Wayne Smith, Bishop of Missouri, turned to the Most Rev. Daniel Deng Bul Yak, Archbishop of Sudan, and invited him to impart the final blessing on the congregation. The words he used to extend this invitation were something like, “Archbishop, my brother, would you bless us in the language of your birth?”

It was, for me, a powerful moment. The Archbishop spoke in what I am told was Dinka, an African language utterly unfamiliar to me (and, I would guess, to nearly everyone else in the Cathedral). And yet, at the moment when he raised his hand high to begin making the sign of the cross over us, every person in that church knew that we…

Hearing about the poverty, violence, and oppression that grip other parts of the world can be overwhelming, and it’s hard to imagine that there’s anything one individual can do. My own faith challenges me to move past that feeling of helplessness, to trust that God will bless whatever efforts, small or large, we can make to reach out to our brothers and sisters in need. Being informed is a good place to start.

To that end, I would like to invite everyone to take advantage of a rare opportunity. The Most Reverend Daniel Deng Bul Yak, Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of Sudan, will be speaking from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 1, in Room 458 of Louderman Hall at Washington University. The event is free and open to the public.

An email I received notes that “The Archbishop will be discussing the political situation in Sudan , concentrating on the…