When the Fire Becomes One “When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” Luke 22:32 The rooster does not crow forever. At some point the sound either hardens a man — or breaks him. I have stood between fires long enough. There is the fire of recognition. The fire of usefulness. The fire of conversation, teaching, output, being needed. And then there is the other fire. The one that burned before Moses and did not consume the bush. The one that descended at Pentecost and d

Warming at Another Fire “When they had kindled a fire of coals there… Peter stood with them, and warmed himself.” John 18:18 You would think at sixty a man would know the difference between warmth and fire. The rooster has already crowed once in my life. It crowed when I realized how much of my priesthood was constructed out of activity. It crowed when the doors closed, when requests were denied, when the scaffolding of identity began to fall. It crowed when I saw how often I

I am sixty years old. That sentence lands differently now. It is no longer abstract. It is not theoretical. It is not about future possibility. It is about what has already been lived. And what has been missed. What is emerging in me is not a critique of seminaries, not a reform of the Church, not a manifesto about structures. It is something far more uncomfortable. It is the slow realization that much of my anxiety about formation and institutional life is really about my ow