Under the Fir Tree

“Cast all your anxieties on him.”   — 1 Peter 5:7 There’s a command hidden inside our anxiety. Peter doesn’t merely tell us that God understands it. He tells us what to do with it. Cast it. Something carried is to be thrown from one set of hands into another. Anxiety often feels like something happening to us, and sometimes it is. The body tightens before the mind knows why. We wake at three in the morning already halfway through an argument that hasn’t happened. Some forms of anxiety become deeply lodged in the body and imagination and require patience, wise counsel, perhaps professional care. But anxiety also raises a spiritual question: Who ’ s going to carry this? And beneath much of our worry, the answer is often: I am. Peter gives another answer. Give it to God. Even that can be misunderstood. We may picture God as someone stronger standing nearby, willing to take a load we can’t manage. There’s truth in that image, but Christianity makes a deeper claim. God isn’t anoth...

There’s a particular cruelty in being reduced to the worst thing you’ve done. Most of us know the feeling, even when the offense is small. You lose your temper. Betray a confidence. Fail someone who trusted you. Return to the habit you swore you were finished with. Say something you can’t retrieve. For a while, perhaps, you can still see yourself whole. Then the mistake begins to spread. What you did becomes what you are. I failed becomes I’m a failure. I lied becomes I’m a liar. I sinned becomes this is simply who I am. Christianity makes a distinction the human heart has trouble keeping straight: a person can be guilty without being reducible to his guilt. God takes sin far more seriously than we usually do. He has no need to soften it, rename it, blame our childhood, our stress, our temperament, the people who provoked us. He knows every circumstance. He also knows the inexcusable part. Nothing is hidden. And still, he calls us by name. That may be one of the strangest things about ...

A man in the audience asked how to rebuild his confidence after a difficult few years. Then came the details. Two dead wives. A pacemaker. His second wife had died four weeks earlier. The pacemaker had gone in around the same time. His first wife had died five years before that. When the host found him in the crowd, the man admitted he wasn’t doing very well. Then he made a joke. At least he’d gotten a free ticket. There’s something almost unbearable about that. Not because the joke was inappropriate, but because it was so human. A man whose life has been cut open twice by death, whose own heart has recently required a machine to keep its rhythm, still finds enough of himself to make strangers laugh. Sometimes grief looks like that. We expect grief to arrive dressed properly. Tears. Silence. A darkened room. But grief will also complain about parking, laugh too loudly, forget why it walked into the kitchen, watch television, answer email, and make a joke about a free ticket four weeks ...

A pastor has declining offertory, an aging building, an unsettled staff, and a school whose future is uncertain. He calls the chancery. Finance offers financial guidance. Human resources helps with staffing. Facilities assesses the building. The schools office reviews enrollment. Each response may be competent and necessary. But someone still has to decide what these problems mean together, what deserves attention first, and how the parish will move forward. Too often, that someone is the pastor, working largely on his own. He hasn't simply asked for help with his parish. Now, he's acquired the additional responsibility of coordinating the chancery. That's where I'd begin a conversation about chancery organization. Not with the org chart. With what happens when the Church's life arrives at our door in the form of one complicated parish. What Do We Need to Become Exceptionally Good At? In the article “ Know What Actually Drives the Organization ,” a question's ex...

Modern life has become very good at telling us what things are worth. We can measure productivity, growth, efficiency, engagement, return on investment, life expectancy, market value, retirement readiness, creditworthiness, caloric intake, sleep quality, steps taken, hours worked, miles driven, dollars raised, children educated, customers acquired. There’s hardly anything left that can’t be turned into a number and placed beside another number. We call this knowledge. And much of it is. The trouble begins when we quietly make a second claim: that what can be measured is what matters. Then the world begins to flatten. A forest becomes timber. A house becomes equity. A university becomes earning potential. Friendship becomes networking. A human body becomes productive capacity. Time becomes a resource. Rest becomes recovery so that we can work again. Even generosity develops metrics. Nothing needs to be hated. It only needs to be priced. That may be one of the strangest achievements of m...