There he was a man who could not walk surrounded by other people with various impairments, lying by the pool of Bethesda for thirty-eight years. Thirty-eight years. That is a really long time. Every day, he watched others enter the water, water that was believed to have healing power when...

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May 18, 2025 5 Easter

I recently finished reading a book by a sociologist of religion, Rodney Stark, titled The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. In this book, Stark seeks to answer the question: “How did a tiny obscure messianic movement from the edge of the Roman Empire dislodge classical paganism and become...

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The final year of my master’s program in Clinical Mental Health Counseling involved an internship in clinical settings. I served part of my hours at a grief counseling center helping to run two grief support groups. I thought I already knew a lot about grief through my many years as...

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