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What's Tony Thinking
April 29, 2025 —
I take off today for a three week trip. First stop NYC and the Mockingbird Ministries Conference at Calvary/ St. George’s Church on the lower east side. Then on Saturday evening an overnight flight to Manchester, England. From there north to Windemere and Ambleside and two weeks of backpacking, one week in the Lake District,... Read More
April 26, 2025 —
The “Abundance Agenda” is getting a lot of attention of late. I’ve mentioned the Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson book, Abundance: How Progress Is Made. I agree with them on a lot of their points. Zoning restrictions, NIMBY-ism and environmental impact statements gone crazy have sometimes made it all but impossible to build anything. The... Read More
April 24, 2025 —
Here’s a guest post from my dear friend, Mary McWilliams. Mary lives in Seattle, worked in health care and was a member of Plymouth Church when I was pastor there. Thanks Mary for this thoughtful contribution. I was listening to The Daily podcast from The New York Times on Wednesday while eating lunch. The longtime... Read More
April 21, 2025 —
I have previously mentioned the new book by the Brookings Institution scholar, Jonathan Rauch. It is Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy. It is such an interesting book, in no small part because it comes from a scholar who isn’t himself religious, but has repented, if you will, of his own onetime contempt for... Read More
April 19, 2025 —
Easter is a not “a triumph of the human spirit” story. It is not about realizing your “human potential.” It is not a story about how the good people endured and overcame. We love those stories. Especially we Americans love those stories. Hero stories. Rags to riches stories. Fighting and winning stories. No, we are... Read More
April 16, 2025 —
In recent weeks I have written several times on themes of the dignity of Work and the importance of Sacrifice. In our current moment, both have fallen on hard times. Work has often come to be viewed as a source of drudgery or frustration. Or it is a necessary evil, to be got through so... Read More
April 15, 2025 —
“One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This” is the title of a new book by Omar El Akkad, an Egyptian-Canadian journalist and novelist. His title has in view the Israeli war in Gaza. But this compelling line is one that has multiple resonances today. El Akkad’s phrase suggests the way people can be... Read More
April 11, 2025 —
Holy Week begins tomorrow, which is Palm Sunday. The word most associated with Palm Sunday is “Hosanna,” which means, in most definitions, “Save us, we pray.” But that’s the genteel, the polite, version. What it really means is “SAVE US, dear God, right now, right this very minute!” It is a cry of desperation. Which... Read More
April 8, 2025 —
In 2003 when the dot.com bubble burst it hit Seattle pretty hard. At the congregation I then served we had a number of people who had, overnight, lost jobs as companies folded. We started a support group for those out of work and looking for work. As it turned out, it was a men’s group,... Read More
April 4, 2025 —
It’s spring in the Northwest, or at least the part of the NW on the west side of the Cascade Mountains. I am enjoying the many colors of green. Here are some photos from walks with Georgie, the dog. All green, save one which shows the cherry blossoms against an April sky. And here... Read More
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