Dear friends,

This Friday’s blog will be the last one I write here at Saint Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church. My plan is to stop writing at least for the next several months to allow the mind to lie fallow and to give myself over completely to the non-verbal practices of contemplation and painting. If I do begin a new blog it will likely be related to a website I hope to develop in connection with painting and the art of contemplation.

…I am deeply grateful to you for welcoming me into your spiritual and intellectual lives. Some of you have read my blogs from the very beginning (almost twenty years ago) when they were published by Duke Divinity School’s church leadership program and the Huffington Post, and subsequently from 2010-2018 by Louisville Seminary; others of you have joined since I came here to Saint Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church in 2019. Many of you have become long-distance friends who have spurred and challenged and enriched my life beyond measure, and I am especially grateful to you…