Get the latest newsletter: April 2016 UPDATE

It’s hard to find a really good way to celebrate a secular Easter.  The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ are not the stuff of simple and lightweight symbols. Easter transmits a complex message, transported through time through a sacrament of blood-wine and body-bread on an altar derived from a sacrificial cult. The best the…

“There’s a big possum in the courtyard,” Annie said. I came to the door and looked out.  Sure enough, the marsupial denizen was poddling out the gate toward the street.  She wasn’t that big, but she was indeed a possum.  Fast for a possum is slow for almost anything else, so with a little spurt…

Anybody who has made it to adulthood has had some experience of the fundamental precariousness of life.  Some have had much more than others.  It is as if you were standing in a forest and heard the wind whistle behind you and looking, you saw that you were on the edge of a steep cliff….

The worst thing of all would be for the Messiah to be born in Metropolitan Richmond this December and for all of us to miss it. Yet one wonders how in the world we could ever see it. For one thing, we are so fragmented, so without a single center, that wherever it was, most…