Secrets Your Pastor Can't Share in a Sermon

A unique glimpse at what faith leaders keep silent about.

A blog on the insights of pastors by Rev. Gary Brinn of Long Island. Eleven in the evening is well past my bedtime, which is to confess that I don't have a particularly glamorous social life. A single man in late middle-age on a tight budget, I try to limit my trips to Monte Carlo to once-a-month or so. All of which means I am not at my best when the late Christmas Eve service rolls around. I'd just as soon be tucked away with visions of sugar plums, but we worship late that night, so I suck it up and do my best. This year the choir was excellent, as always, though the whole community has been struggling a bit. It isn't easy to reconcile the call to be festive with the devastation caused by Superstorm Sandy, much less the massacre in …

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Sea, Sky & Spirit

'There Are Better Things Ahead Than We Left Behind'

Musings about life by the sea.

Time marches on. “Still round the corner there may wait, a new road, or a secret gate,” said J. R. R. Tolkien. The beach is deserted. Sweeping views of choppy surf, sand and rocky terrain reveal neither man nor beast. It is a blank slate lying fallow and forgotten on the first day of 2012. Shortly, it will wear its winter wardrobe of snow and ice, and arctic winds will blow. Yet nothing compares with a sunset over a world of white. Next summer, cars, trucks and trailers will cover this horseshoe-shaped cove, and the shack will be open for beach passes. Boaters towing trailers will wait their turn as they back down the ramp and release their sail and power boats into the sea. Windsurfers will careen across the waves. Children will wade into…

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