The South Florida campus where I teach stretches over many acres. It is a lush, sub-tropical paradise of green spaces, palm trees, and variegated shrubs in an explosion of colors. Our easternmost border, affectionately dubbed the “Lower East Side” by several New York transplants, is located across the street from the Intracoastal Waterway. Surrounded by…

Divisions are fracturing our Christian communities, especially in America. Disagreement over Covid vaccinations and policies, black lives matter, women in leadership, and other issues are being exaggerated within our community depleting social distancing practices. The insistent background noise of political schism whining on social media adds to this fracturing. These tensions are raising concerns: Will…

I was recently provoked to fresh reflection on two very familiar passages as I prepared to share them with education students. One is about schooling; the other is about being born anew. I had admired them both, but now gained a fresh sense of their interconnection. Both are drawn from a vivid allegory that predates…

They say that you cannot step into the same river twice, because the water is always changing. A university campus can feel like that, too. Every four years there is an eager freshman and a knowing senior, but they are never the same ones. There are always the same complaints about parking, but the complainers…

At a recent lunch with some of my colleagues, our discussion turned to the topic of the inflation that has developed in the US economy over the past year.  I am sixty-one years old while my lunch companions were in their 40’s and 30’s.  I was surprised to see their lack of knowledge and concern…

The recent movie Don’t Look Up is getting a lot of buzz. Some 152 million streaming hours were logged during one week after its release on Netflix. The movie is a star-studded, satirical allegory for climate change denial told in the context of impending global doom by an approaching comet. Climate reporter Cara Buckley, writing…

I may have Ronald Reagan to thank for my marriage. During the spring of 1995, I visited the Russian city of Kostroma to continue my dissertation research that involved visiting 17 Russian and Ukrainian cities. During that visit, I ended up going to a Russian Orthodox Easter service out in a small country church. The all night…

My path as a Christian paleontologist has been a journey. I wouldn’t necessarily say that it has been marked by peril, especially since I’ve never lost my faith, but it has certainly involved many stumbling blocks along the way. During my years as an undergraduate student at what is now Calvin University, I became increasingly…

In early 2020, I taught the second installment of a 3-part theology series for a group of students in an Urban Ministry Leadership Program offered by a leading seminary in the Chicago area. The immediate challenge was taking over a course in mid-stream. The previous professor—a dear friend and respected instructor in her own rite—transitioned…