the unlikely orange

note: i wrote these words back in 2017, after a series of tragedies.  you can see the original post here .  i have adapted these words to deal with the unthinkable gun violence perpetrated against people of color and children in our country in the last couple of weeks.  i share them here as a way to move us, as people of faith, to something more than just words, cynicism, or empty religious platitudes.    It has been a season of terrible tragedy.  And once again I have noticed in the news a trending phrase: thoughts and prayers.  It even has its own hashtag on twitter and other social media, but net necessarily in a good way.  People are understandably tired of hearing about others’ thoughts and prayers, when that is often only a thinly-veiled way of saying that our only obligation to those who suffer is a brief moment of silence, or nothing more than a tweet or public statement.  The truth is that, for those of us who follow Jesus, much is ...

back in early june, as part of an overall effort to get more healthy, i started jogging.  i was just kind of walking and running a couple of miles to start off, but over the last 4 months i've been staying consistent, which has helped me to run faster and further, lose some weight, and just generally be healthier.  on fridays, which are my day off, i try to run a longer distance, and i've been adding a mile every other week or so, which meant that today i ran 9 miles in about 99 minutes, which isn't great, but it isn't terrible, either.  mostly, it just feels good to be doing it, and to feel healthier in a general sense, physically, spiritually, emotionally, and so on.  but there is one area that i haven't felt great about.  professionally, these last 8 months have been, without doubt, some of the most difficult in my 21+ years of full-time ministry.  now don't get me wrong: i love my job.  i really do.  it is so much more than just a job f...

"faceless immigrants 1-13" mixed media collage (found papers, acrylic paint, glue) on hardcover bookboard november, 2018 gregory a. milinovich i know that this is a divisive subject, and i don't mean to divide.  in fact, my sincere hope would be to build and connect.  but as i continue to glue things together in a way that expresses what is going on in my soul, i cannot help but deal with some of the discord i find there recently.   the news has been full of stories about immigration, asylum-seekers, and how we maintain borders.  these are complicated issues, to be sure, but one of the ways that i find myself struggling as i process the things i see and hear (or sometimes try to avoid seeing and hearing), is to remember that we aren't just talking about an issue here.   when we start painting in broad strokes and speaking in swaths of generalities, we deal in issues and policies and i understood that conversation at that level is...

i remember watching the old cartoon “The Jetsons” as a kid, enjoying the idea of flying cars, and robots making your meals for you at the push of a button.   at some point i concluded that this was a vision of our future, and sometimes, i have to admit, i look around and wonder where the flying cars are, or why we haven’t figured out a way to have smell-a-vision.   i mean, it’s 2018, people!   if i cant taste it through the TV, i want to at least smell what they’re making on the Great British Bakeoff!   but today i read an amazing article by Avinash Kaushik about some of the technological advances that are happening in our world; things that will continue to unfold and evolve during our lifetimes.    he anticipates that by the time the next generation is reaching adulthood that we will have two categories of humans: organic and augmented.   he further suggests that by 2075 or 2100 all humans could be augmented.   augmented how?   wel...

every year our family makes a summer bucket list, a collection of things we'd like to experience/do/achieve/accomplish during the summer.  we don't always get all of them done, but we usually get through most of them.  some of the items are traditions that we do every year, and some are unique to each year.  and of course our graphic designer wife/mom makes it look super awesome, as a kind of family memoir.  here are some from previous years: but this year i felt kind of weird about sharing it.  i mean, my news feed is full of stories of kids being stowed in enclosures made of metal fencing (not cages, we are told); kids who have been ripped from their parents' arms.  children who probably don't have a summer bucket list, or if they do it just says, "get back to my parents," or "escape."  i cannot fathom a more fundamentally blunt symbol of our own privilege and blessing: that we will engage in a summer of camps and cream soda, ...

there is a tree in my back yard.  i'm pretty sure it's an oak tree.  at least that's what i think Shannon told me.  i don't know my oaks from my maples, my elms from my locusts.  to me, it's a tree: a corinthian column bursting up into life and glory.  full of sap and pulp and rings and bugs and cells pulsing with water and always reaching for something.  it is full of rhythm, reach and flourish then fall and die, and repeat.  this particular tree, though, isn't of one mind.  half of it's rusted orange leaves have given up their grip and surrendered -gracefully or not - to the pull of gravity and the threat of winter.  the north side of this inauspicious oak is just about bare naked, all sticks and straight lines, a skeleton of itself.  but the side that looks south is stubbornly resisting change.  no longer green, the leaves have compromised their summer vibrancy, but they are clearly not ready to concede death just yet....

"MLK" by Derek Russell, 2013 hope.  it's what i've built my ministry on. well, not exactly.  hope that isn't based on anything is just wishful thinking, or worse.  so i've built my ministry on hope in the love of Jesus Christ, who died for love and rose again.  i've built my ministry on this idea that love wins.  that love wins over hate, over fear, over pain, over addiction, over war, over oppression, over everything, even death.  i've built my ministry on that love.  of course, it is centered on the death and resurrection of Jesus.  which means it takes belief, or faith.  it is often mixed pretty heavily with doubt, but at my core, i believe. so, to recap: my whole life is really about trying to live and proclaim a wild-eyed and radical hope, which is based on the unthinkable, unquenchable, inseparable love of Jesus, which i experience through a (sometimes diluted) faith that i cling to, with clenched fists and strained muscles. ...

chalk art by shannon  hey friends.  i have had a couple of comments from some folks recently about why i haven't been blogging as much.  even if no one was asking, i must admit that i sometimes wrestle with some inner voice which tells me that i'm not doing enough, not contributing enough, not writing enough, not being enough. to which i say "bull pucky." it's true, i haven't been writing as frequently here as i have at times in the past, but further reflection on the reasons for that lack of writing has led me to remember that being a dad is a full-time occupation.  i am in the wonderful throes of helping three boys become young men, and it takes just about every bit of energy that i have.  and i get it wrong at least as often (if not more) than i get it right.  and then i have to undo, or redo, and that takes even more energy. i went with jackson's class to the metropolitan museum of art on thursday.  my so-very-well-behaved son (i was so ...

i don't know if you can see the little green caterpillar crawling in the broccoli in the picture above. we sure didn't. we got much of our vegetables last summer from a farm co-op, which provided us all kinds of fresh, locally grown vegetables in exchange for our financial support of their farm.  it was a great arrangement, that put all kinds of good food on our table.  we were very blessed by this.  but the kids weren't quite as enthused when we discovered that a green caterpillar or two had been cooked, along with the broccoli.  they were even more disgusted when i showed them that it wasn't a big deal by eating one right in front of them.  they thought that i had ascended to the very peak of mount disgusting, and it was quite the topic of conversation in our home for a few days.  the next time they helped shannon to prepare some broccoli for dinner, they closely examined it before cooking it, and sure enough they found another little green caterpi...

"lent 2015 (2): self" mixed media collage (tissue paper, wallpaper glue, acrylic paint, found letters, gel medium on stretched canvas) february, 2015 gregory a. milinovich "i am a wreck," says the impostor, the voice inside who sometimes whispers, but more often shouts his hateful half-truths through the hallways of my psyche and my soul.  "i am a disaster.  i'm a terrible father, a fraud of a pastor, and an overall failure as a human being." "you are made in my image," replies the God of the Universe, the Creator of everything, and the Author of life.  "i made you, and i call you good.  No, scratch that: i call you very good ." "that sounds so nice," replies the impostor, with a profound cynicism disguised as intellectualism and maturity.  "those ancient words would be so comforting if you could believe such nonsense, but the empirical proof is in the pathetic pudding.  i mean, look at me.  my head is...

crunch.  crunch.  crunch.  the sound of my slippery-bottomed dress shoes as i trudged through the snow on my way home from church.  i was looking down at the snow, at first so i wouldn't slip, but then because i noticed the footprints of all three of my sons alongside Shannon's.  i could see where they had stepped, both on their way to church, and home again, some steps obscured by others, bearing witness to the traveling circus that is our family.  but the shape and direction of each little print revealed its maker. three little boys.  following their mother.  through the snow.  in their dress shoes. it's enough to make a dad cry.  and it was certainly enough to make this dad think.  where will these footsteps lead?  at the moment, they were leading me home from church, where those three precious boys and their mother would likely be sorting laundry, getting lunch ready, and already making preparations for the afternoon...

sometimes you read something about someone and you think, "man, i really wish someone would say that about me someday."   well, at least i do.   and that happened this morning.  i was reading frederick buechner's words about a teacher he once had who taught the old testament with passion and pizazz, just close enough to foolishness to be memorable and meaningful in a way that only a person possessed with conviction can really do.  anyway, buechner is writing about this man, "james muilenburg," and he writes: "'Every morning when you wake up,' he used to say, 'before you reaffirm your faith in the majesty of a loving God, before you say I believe for another day, read the Daily News with its record of the latest crimes and tragedies of mankind and then see if you can honestly say it again.' He was a fool in the sense that he didn't or couldn't or wouldn't resolve, intellectualize, evade, the tensions of his faith but liv...

in an article entitled " almighty God in the age of exaggeration ," which was written by Megan Hill and appeared in the november 2014 edition of 'christianity today,' this quote is expressed and defended: "if everything is awesome, then nothing is." the defense offered is that only God is truly awesome (eliciting terrible awe) and therefore the word (as well as other adjectives, punctuation marks and emoticons) ought to be reserved for the God who alone is holy. this, in my humble opinion, is bologna. old, slimy, slightly sour bologna. "say to God, 'how awesome are your             works !'" - psalm 66:3 the truth is, the poet recognizes that it is not merely the self or substance of God which may elicit a holy sense of awe (or even righteous fear, as isaiah could attest to), but also the works of God; that is, the things that God has done and is doing. like what?  what could the psalmist possibly be talking about?  well ...

okay.  so here's the problem.  the longer i go without posting something worth writing and reading on this blog, the harder it gets to post at all.  i think its been nearly two weeks since i wrote, and when that happens, i feel more and more pressure (from myself) to write something that validates the lack of posts. but i got nothing. so, in an effort to just grit my teeth and forge ahead today, i am singularly rejecting the idea that all my absenteeism requires some epic post to compensate.  instead, i will simply jot down a few things rattling around in my head this morning. the other night at dinner quin told us that he likes to eat yodels at a wash-a-not.  and that he likes flushies and hot gogs from target.  (yodels = noodles; wash-a-not = restaurant; flushies = slushies).  he also calls that orange circle through which you toss a ball to earn two points by the following name: basketball poop.   i've been on a huge bruce springste...

i believe in magic.  or, as the late great nick drake sang so hauntingly , "i was made to love magic." but not that sleight-of-hand variety, practiced by charlatans and shysters.  i mean, i enjoy a good trick as much as the next person, but i don't love magic tricks.  that's not magic.  those are illusions.  tricks and illusions are just that:  things that, by definition  are the opposite of real.  they distort and obstruct reality in order to make it seem like something else is real.  but nothing has really changed.  it is merely a trick. but i was made to love magic.  real magic.  where reality really does shift and change in ways that are sacramental in the purest sense of the word: mysterious. let me explain. yesterday it snowed.  again.  on the second-to-last day of march it snowed like the proverbial lion of march decided to eat the lamb and tear it to bits, with pieces of white wool flying around eve...

one thousand.  that can be plenty of something, depending on what it is. then add eight more hundred to it. plenty, right?  especially when they are blog posts.  yep, this is my 1,800th post here at this same corner of the internet.  that seems like a pretty formidable number. in fact, it's hard for me to believe that i've written that much. but i have. and while i am proud that i've been able to stay consistent and write that much, i'm even happier that my outlook on the whole thing has matured as well. i used to check my stats and count something called "page views," whatever that means. but not anymore. i truly don't worry about it. i'm no longer concerned with who is or is not reading; i am writing because i love to write.  and i feel as though i've only just begun to scratch the surface of what my soul is begging to say. or maybe that isn't the best way to put it. perhaps what i mean is that i desperately need to keep saying what i've ...