A picture of waiting: an empty Adirondack chair © adirondackstreet.com Romans 8:12-25 Matthew 13:24-30,36-43 One thing about living with small children is that it takes a while to do just about anything. Going to the grocery store? Sure thing. Let’s just put on our shoes and get into the car. No, no, no…not the leopard shoes, the ballerina shoes. "No, Dada," not those ballerina shoes, the black ballerina shoes. Oh wait, we forgot our headband. And now we must go potty. Okay,

An imaginary image of an open tomb in the Adirondacks - image generated by ChatGPT Romans 8:1-11 Matthew 13:1-9,18-23 My colleagues and I in the Religion Department at my high school have been focused on attention for the past three years. We have wrestled with the ways our smart devices compete for and capture our attention, interrupting us with vibrations and noises and offering a constant stream of intermittent rewards. We have wrestled with the ways our political and medi

A panorama view from Mount Jo in the Adirondacks. Photo © Dan Mish (Facebook, October 3, 2025) Romans 7:15-25 Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 We are in the midst of a cultural rupture. It can feel, at times, as though there is a battle raging around us, as if we have become prisoners of war within a conflict that is beyond our ability to control or direct. Society appears close to breaking point as it struggles to hold together the enormous tension between imagining itself called to

Sundown in the Adirondacks : An encounter with beauty -- image © adventuresingoodcompany.com Romans 6:12-23 Matthew 10:40-42 “Mr. Montgomery,” my students often ask me, “is this going to be on the test?” The question betrays the reality that my students are often less interested in learning the material than they are in performing to meet a standard. My desire – as a teacher – is for my students to be captured by the material, engaged in the beauty and complexity of it all, s