Under the Fir Tree

What does it mean to be a Christian? Not first: to admire Christ. Not even first: to talk about Christ. The first thing is simpler, and harder: to follow him. “Follow me” (Mark 1:17) means this: go where he leads. Let his word choose your road, set your pace, and correct your turns. A fan applauds. A disciple obeys. That’s the distinction. Now, everyone follows something. No one lives by pure accident. One man follows ambition; another follows comfort. One follows fear; another follows appetite. One follows the crowd; another follows his wounds. We become like our ruler. So if Christ is Lord, then he must be more than a decoration hung on an otherwise self-directed life. He must be the center. Here’s the argument in three steps: First, what leads us shapes us. Second, Christ commands not mere admiration but following. Third, a Christian life that keeps control for the self while giving compliments to Jesus isn’t yet discipleship. It’s religion at arm’s length. That’s why the real battl...

Most of us aren’t in a literal prison. But plenty of us know something of the feeling. A body that won’t cooperate. A job we can’t leave yet. A season of grief that narrows life down to the basics. A marriage under strain. A waiting room. A diagnosis. A failure. A closed door. Even a quiet kind of inner confinement — where your days are full, your phone is loud, and yet your soul feels like it’s been locked in a back room for years. That’s why Solzhenitsyn’s line lands with such force: “You should rejoice that you are in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul.” It sounds almost offensive at first. Rejoice? In confinement? In loss? In the place you never would’ve chosen? And yet beneath the shock there’s a strange mercy. Because one of the tragedies of modern life is that we can avoid our soul for a very long time. We can stay in motion. Stay entertained. Stay productive. Stay outraged. Stay scrolling. We can fill every quiet space with noise, and call it life. But eventu...

You can tell a lot about a person by the first few minutes of their morning. A text. An email. A reminder. A headline. And just like that, your body's awake but your soul's already bracing. A low-grade tension that settles in before anything has even happened. A lot of us live there. And what’s strange is that many of us say we believe the gospel. We say we trust Jesus. We say we’ve been forgiven. But functionally, we still move through the day like it all depends on us. Paul says, “We have peace with God.” Not we might. Not we could if we perform well enough. We have it. That isn’t a passing feeling. It’s a new reality. In Christ, God has received us. The war is over on his side. The ache is that we often keep fighting on ours. Because you live from whatever you think will save you. That’s true for all of us. If you think achievement will save you, you’ll never really rest. If you think approval will save you, you’ll keep checking faces. If you think control will save you, y...

I remember January 2020. It arrived like a bell struck in a dark sacristy—one note that wouldn’t stop ringing. The streets thinned, the doors clicked shut, the air itself seemed suspect, and we learned how quickly a whole civilization can take communion with fear: masked, gloved, hygienic, obedient—almost devout, the way a crowd can be devout when it’s worshiping its own survival. And many of the Church’s leaders—God help us, and God help them—offered a catechesis as clear as it was unintended: that, in the end, the sacraments weren’t ultimately a matter of life and death. They didn’t preach it with their mouths; they preached it with locks, schedules, memos, and the smooth, well-meaning phrases of administrators. The tabernacles waited in empty churches like little iron hearts. The baptismal fonts dried up like wells in a famine. The confessional went silent, and the silence had teeth. I’m not saying the bishops should’ve played at being martyrs for the thrill of it, as though reckle...

The Great Commission Matthew 28:19 Jesus’ final words in Matthew 28:19 are striking because they’re so earthy: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” That command assumes roads. Conversations. Misunderstanding. Patience. It assumes tears and courage and ordinary Tuesdays. It assumes a world where people are still deciding who they’ll trust, who they’ll follow, and what story they’ll build their life on. And that’s exactly why it can't be done in heaven. In heaven, faith will be sight. No one will need to be invited to follow Jesus because everyone will already know him as he is. There will be no nations to reach in the sense Jesus means here. No rebellion left. No gospel to explain through trembling words. No neighbor still living under the weight of shame, confusion, or self-rule. The Great Commission belongs to this age because this age is still full of people who are loved by God and not yet awake to that love. That gives a strange dignity to our life now. A lot of us...

What should a Catholic make of a very evangelical small-group manual? That’s the right question. Not: Is it Catholic in every respect? It isn’t. Not: Must we borrow nothing from Protestants? That would be pride dressed as prudence. The real question is simpler: Is there something here that serves the Church’s true end—union with Christ in His Body? In the case of Steve Gladen and Lance Witt’s 250 Big Ideas for Purpose Driven Small Groups , the answer is yes, and more than yes. There's real pastoral wisdom here, even if it must be received with Catholic judgment and baptized into a fuller ecclesial vision. First, a definition. A method is a tool; a theology is a worldview. Tools can be borrowed. Worldviews can't be swallowed whole. That distinction matters. A Catholic reader doesn't come to this book looking for a complete doctrine of the Church, the sacraments, or authority. He comes looking for practical wisdom about forming Christians in real communities. And on that scor...

What frightens us most: the storm, or the thought that we’re in it alone? Our Lord’s words in John 6:20 are brief because truth often is brief: “ It is I; do not be afraid. ” First, the fact. Then, the command. First, his presence. Then, our courage. Christ doesn't begin by explaining the wind, measuring the waves, or praising the disciples for their effort. He says, in effect, “You have Me. Therefore, don't yield to fear.” Fear is the feeling that something bad may master you. Courage isn't the absence of fear; it's doing the good while fear protests. And Christ’s presence isn't a mood; it's a reality. Near isn’t a sentiment. Near is a fact. Now make the distinction that changes everything: fear can be present without being in charge . A barking dog may be in the yard, but that does not make it the owner of the house. In the same way, a Christian may feel fear sharply—tight chest, racing thoughts, sleepless mind—and yet refuse to let fear sit in the chair of j...

Most people are first told that philosophy is worth studying because it teaches “critical thinking,” as if its highest service were to sharpen the mind into a better tool. That sounds plausible in a world of exams, markets, reports, and systems. But the lie beneath it is thin and mechanical: it treats the intellect as an instrument for handling problems rather than as a power ordered toward truth. Philosophy is worthy of study because it refuses that reduction. It asks not merely how a thing works, but what it is; not merely whether a conclusion follows, but whether the first principles are sound; not merely what can be done, but what is worth doing, and why anything should count as worth at all. The mind wasn’t made only to manage. It was made to behold. Therefore philosophy isn’t an academic luxury. It’s the soul’s training in reality. Every other science takes some region of being as its field and, rightly, disciplines itself to that field. Physics studies motion and matter. Biology...

Most days in parish life don’t feel dramatic. You answer emails. You sit in another meeting. You make a call. You prep for Sunday. You walk the same hallway. You have the same kinds of conversations with the same kinds of needs. And somewhere in all of that, it’s easy to start believing the lie that the important work of God must be somewhere else. Somewhere bigger. Somewhere more obvious. But the Gospels tell a different story. Jesus seems strangely unhurried in ordinary moments. He notices people by wells, by roads, at tables, in crowds, on the way to somewhere else. And again and again, what looks small becomes holy. A question becomes an invitation. A meal becomes a place of belonging. A passing moment becomes the turning point in someone’s life. Isn’t that comforting? And also confronting? Because many of us live just fast enough to miss the life right in front of us. We move from task to task, solving problems, managing details, trying to keep things afloat. And without realizin...

Last night I saw In This Corner of the World , and I didn’t come away from it as a critic comes away from a picture, with neat phrases in his pocket. I came away like a man who’s been through the fire once and smells smoke in places where other people still call the air clean. Lizz died of cancer a year ago, and there are still griefs that don’t pass so much as change rooms in the house. You think they’ve gone, and then, in the most ordinary hour, they’re standing at the table before you again. That’s why this film struck me with such terrible courtesy. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t flatter pain by dressing it in theatrical clothes. It knows that suffering comes into the world like weather through a cracked frame, first touching the humble things: the rice bowl, the sleeve, the lamp, the meal set out at evening, the voice that answers from the next room until one day it doesn’t. Set among the common lives of Hiroshima and Kure during the war, it follows Suzu through marriage, want, bomb...

There’s something stark about it. Lilith Clinic ’s own 2021 opening announcement said its Portland location would begin seeing patients on March 19, 2021. And March 19 is the Church’s Solemnity of St. Joseph . So yes—the timing is real. And the name is real too. Lilith Clinic publicly presents itself as an abortion provider in Portland. From a Christian imagination, that lands with a kind of chill. Because St. Joseph stands for almost the exact opposite spirit. He’s the quiet guardian of Jesus and Mary. He receives life, protects life, shelters life. In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph is the man who obeys God promptly, takes Mary into his home, and later rises in the night to protect the child from death. So when an abortion business begins on Joseph’s feast, and under the name “ Lilith , ” it does feel more than accidental in a symbolic sense. Not because every calendar overlap’s a secret code. But because names form imagination. Feast days form imagination. And whether they meant it that wa...

“What kind of parish are we trying to build? That’s the first question. Not the budget question. Not the attendance question. Not even the strategy question. The first question is simpler and sharper: are we forming people whose inner life matches their outer profession?  Much modern discipleship rewards activity, image, and giftedness while tolerating deep emotional immaturity underneath the surface. Here’s the trouble: doing isn’t the same as being. Activity is motion; maturity is depth. A parish can be busy and still be brittle. A leader can be fruitful in public and starving in private. That’s the burden—that the soul can lag behind the role, and when it does, the ministry eventually begins to crack at the seams. So what is emotional health? Plainly: telling the truth about what’s going on inside you. And what is spiritual health? Not merely knowing about God, but living in communion with Him. The claim here isn’t that these are identical, but that they can’t be safely separate...

You feel it in ordinary places. In the clinic waiting room. In the checkout line. In the blue glow of your phone when the house is finally quiet. The same thought keeps coming back: my life is a problem to solve. So you start managing everything. Your body becomes something to optimize, protect, upgrade, maybe even escape. Relationships become useful exchanges. Time becomes a system to master. A calendar to control. A future to engineer. It feels normal. It feels inevitable. But it isn’t. Only God is. Underneath our obsession with control is an older mistake. We’ve learned to treat the body like matter without meaning, and the soul like private emotion. We split apart what God made whole. We act as if meaning only shows up when we create it. As if love is just a feeling. As if freedom is having more options. But that story doesn’t actually make us free. It makes the world thin. Functional. Manageable. Empty. A world stripped of mystery can offer efficiency, but not communion . It can o...

What’s happening to the soul in emerging adulthood? Not simply unbelief. Not simply rebellion. More often, drift. Drift isn’t a decision. It’s what happens when strong currents meet a boat with no anchor. And Souls in Transition describes exactly such a sea: delayed adulthood, postponed commitments, moral experimentation, digital distraction, and a culture that tells young people to keep every option open as long as possible. In that world, religion doesn’t usually die with a shout. It fades by neglect. Practice slumps, attention scatters, and conviction thins into mood. The problem isn’t always that God is denied; it’s that God becomes unnecessary. Faith isn’t refuted. It’s reduced. That reduction matters. A religion reduced to comfort can’t carry the weight of a real life. If faith becomes merely therapeutic—something to soothe, affirm, and occasionally assist—then it will be used the way we use an app: opened when convenient, ignored when costly, deleted when demanding. But religi...

What’s a parish for? That’s the first question. Not: How many programs do we run? Not: How busy are our calendars? But: What are we asking people to become? A parish exists to make disciples — a learner who follows Jesus with his whole life. If that’s the end, then everything else is a means. Preaching is a means. Ministries are means. Meetings are means. Even good traditions, necessary as they are, are means. The end is conversion—real people hearing Christ’s invitation and answering it. So clarity matters because love does. If you love people, you don’t hand them a fog bank. You hand them a road. A church with ten voices saying ten different things may still be sincere, but sincerity isn’t the same thing as clarity. And people can’t walk a path they can’t see. This is why a unified message has such force. When the homily, the ministry leader, the marriage prep team, the catechist, and the pastor all point in the same direction, the parish begins to sound like one witness instead of m...

At the kitchen table, two people talk about groceries, calendars, and who forgot to answer the text. But there’s often something heavier in the room than what’s being said. They name the problem as money, exhaustion, sex, betrayal, tone. And sometimes that really is the problem. Real wounds are real wounds. But under those wounds, there can be something deeper. They’ve started to treat love like something to manage instead of something to receive and respond to. They’ve started to relate to marriage like it’s a machine that should just run on instinct. And when it starts to groan, they assume it’s broken. But covenant was never meant to be self-sustaining. Nothing created is. Only God simply is. Everything else lives by grace, by gift, by being held. So the ring isn’t just jewelry. The vow isn’t just theater. They’re visible signs of an invisible reality. They remind us that love isn't a mood to protect, but a promise to inhabit. And when a husband and wife stop honoring the small ...

You know that moment just before you do the thing you know you need to do? A child stands at the edge of a cold pool. Toes curled over the tile. The body already knows what the mind won’t admit yet: the water is survivable. The jump is possible. But until the imagination can picture a world where the shock doesn’t ruin him, the will freezes and calls that paralysis wisdom. That’s one of the first lies we believe about change. We act as if the will is the deepest part of us. As if transformation begins with deciding harder. But it usually doesn’t. The will tends to walk only where the imagination has already shown it life is possible. So when your inner world is filled with loss, embarrassment, pain, or futility, of course you stall. And then reluctance starts to wear the mask of prudence. A lot of what we call caution is really a starved imagination. And a starved imagination can’t carry much weight. That’s how lives get small without becoming obviously evil. A man won’t ask for forgiv...