The Rev. Sean Lanigan

Greed and worry were just part of the air I breathed in my childhood. And they’ve followed me ever since–much more difficult to shake than many of my other personality quirks.

As people largely at arm’s length from the vicissitudes of nature—most of us being city dwellers—how are we to think about and talk about a relationship with the land? About the value of land, the meaning of land, the purpose of land? We tend to think more about real estate, about property, about architecture, than we do about the land itself. And this, of course, is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of humanity.

What do you think about when you think about gun violence? What kinds of scenarios, settings, and contexts come immediately to mind? Active shooter alerts? Schools on lockdown? Mass shootings in public places? Heated debates and political stalemates about gun control laws? Gun violence is on all of our minds these days. We’re wondering, worrying …

Gun Violence Awareness Sunday: Reckoning with Death Read More »

If God was hosting a dinner party, God would be sure to invite all the people we would never have considered inviting. Not out of malice toward us, of course, but simply because God has the capacity to enjoy, to delight in, the people we find most unappetizing.

There’s a certain militance that is detectable in some of Jesus’ speaking and acting, and this tone can make us uncomfortable. It would be so much easier if we could just write it all off, so much easier if we could just frame this as some sort of aberration.

Asking for and receiving help just isn’t something many of us like to do. We prefer to be the helper, rather than the one who is being helped. We relish the power of offering help, but hate the powerlessness of needing it.

Imagine with me. Imagine that you are looking at preschools for your child, visiting a few places to see which might be a good fit. These days, it seems as if every school has a motto, a slogan…some sort of a vision statement. Some attempt to set itself apart. And often, these slogans are visible …

The Prayer of the Children Read More »

We try to build towers into the heavens, having no sense of boundaries or limits, no sense that Creation is a delicate and intricate balance of forces, no sense that the Creator has been trying again and again, gently and not-so-gently, to put us in our places.

The aftermath of the first Easter was not at all uniformly joyous for those who had loved Jesus. Indeed, those early post-resurrection days were much more emotionally complicated than our contemporary Easter festivities ever let on.

I’ve been wondering this week about the difficulty some of us have with entering the emotional world of Good Friday. And I’ve been wondering if one reason we struggle is because Jesus’ death just isn’t all that shocking to us. His death, it seems, has lost whatever ability it might have once had to appall us.