A handwritten card is a sacrament. When it arrives in the mail, you hold in your hands the beautiful evidence that we are in relationship.

This Lent, I’m engaging in three prayer practices, each of which is holding unexpected gifts.

I mean that there is an element to our grief when a young person dies that is not there in the death of an elder. That’s because, after such a death, we mourn not only for our loved one’s absence but also for the decades to come that we now will not and cannot share.

Part of me – or let me risk being presumptuous here and say: part of us – wants to distance ourselves from faith because so many screwed-up and hateful things have been done in the name of God.

A little while before Christmas, I completed a video game that I started playing in 1985.

Remember: Human beings need to be careful what we worship. Because we will worship something.