No, this is not about labor negotiations, though it may be about a group of folks who, if nothing else, have an eye on the bottom line. This is about a plan to close three of the eight Neshaminy elementary schools, and, in particular, Oliver Heckman School here in Langhorne. The Borough Council doesn’t like the idea and neither do I. I may be nuts to bring up school board politics of any kind, but I will.

Some acknowledgements first. Continue reading →

Becky and I are eagerly awaiting the return of Downton Abbey to our Sunday night routine. For those of you who don’t know, Downton Abbey is BBC/PBS mini-series beginning its third eight-episode season. Okay, some people might call it a soap opera, and it is, but it is sophisticated, witty and, well, so British.

Downton Abbey itself is the fictional Yorkshire manor house of Lord and Lady Grantham, their three daughters, the earl’s mother, the Dowager Countess, and a host of downstairs servants. The stories that were told in the first two seasons took us through the years just prior to and during the First World War. The third season will take us into the 1920’s. There are ominous clouds of change and, we are told, tragedy on the horizon. Continue reading →

Google News is open on my browser and I’m checking periodically for news as to whether or not we will fall, slide, tumble, trip or otherwise be troubled by this fiscal cliff, the edge with which apparently we have been flirting for over a year. By all accounts going over this cliff will not be a good thing, but not so bad, it seems, that our leaders are ready to lead us away from it.

There is a sense in which much of our lives is spent near the edge of the cliff, the various cliffs of our lives. Some of us have our own fiscal cliffs, while for others it is a relational cliff or a medical cliff or, yes, a spiritual cliff. Continue reading →

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were;  any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 

 
The decision to ring our church bell in memory of the Sandy Hook victims came late. I had seen a headline about it, but busy with other things, I had not paid much attention. Only late yesterday afternoon did a friend and LPC member ask if our bell would toll this morning.

If I hesitated a moment it was because of my ambivalence about civil religion, this call from the governor of Connecticut (we were asked to ring our bell not because we are a people who know the God of all comfort, but because we have a bell to ring). I paused, too, because we Americans grieve so poorly. We hope that green and white ribbons and piles of flowers in the school parking lot will be enough to numb the sting of death. Was this bell-ringing to be just one more shallow way to deal with so deep a sorrow?

Of course, we rang our bell. How could we not? It was important that we ring the bell. It was important for me to lay aside my own concerns for the common good. It went well. We were not a large group who gathered, but we heard Scripture read and prayed and then listened as the bell tolled its 26 slow rings. As the sound of the last toll was lost in the cold gray air of this first day of winter, we prayed again, using the words of Paul about the God of all comfort. Continue reading →

The news of the school shooting in Connecticut stuns us. The tragedy, too familiar in its plot line, is unthinkable in the sorrow and pain it has brought into the lives of families, friends and an entire community. What would we say to a parent or a grandparent, a husband, wife, child, brother or sister whose loved one went to school this morning like every morning, but will never return home?

Already the partisans are manning their familiar positions and snipers are taking shots at those across the battle lines on the issues of gun control and Second Amendment rights. Is there some way to quiet them, to tell them to quit their harsh harangues so that we might find a way to end the insanity of gun violence and guns in the hands of the insane?

And for now, can we just be still long enough to mourn the slaughter of too many innocents? Continue reading →