In Israel, once a year, a priestly climber would reach the peak of a very different kind of mountain. Here's his story.

Three of the most profound truths embedded in the fabric of the universe are that blood has a voice, blood cries out to God, and blood is heard by heaven.

This coming Sunday churches around the world will celebrate the big, splashy day of Pentecost. As well they should.

We who fall within the Protestant camp of Christianity have longstanding issues with ritual. I get that. Ritual is often abused. Idolatrized. It can easily devolve into a hollow act of religious farce.

Burdened within and without, we cross the threshold into church. We don't leave behind our earthiness, our tragedies, our white-knuckled grip on the last vestige of dignity in our sad lives.

“You shall have no other gods,” God says, and we, spurred on by the prohibition, roll up our sleeves and get to work fashioning gods like there’s no tomorrow.

As I floated in the Gulf of Mexico, I spoke these truths, but it was not the waters or the heavens that needed to hear them.

Who are we, really, but a bag of blood and bones, in which are mixed in bittersweet memories and the shards of shattered dreams and broken hearts?

I think the chief reason that a faction within me welcomes the disintegration of the American ethos is this: it makes me feel so much better about myself. The smut makes me quite smug.

He may be a good sport about it, smile for the camera, congratulate the better man, but secretly he hates the loss and covets another chance at victory.

O such is the crumbling fortress of the god of this world, but how it entices our flesh! For it looks like a house of candy to the Hansels and Gretels who wander through this world.

The place where God appears or dwells ceases to be common ground; it becomes holy. Dust, rocks, vegetation, wood, metals, everything roundabout soaks in his sacredness.