The Internet Monk Archives

Let’s Discuss: A Taxing Question

UPDATE 2: Here is a good overview and guide to the clergy housing allowance.

UPDATE: Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said that this judgment is against the Constitution.

“We have seen many courts over the years attempt to banish God in various ways from the public square, but this case in particular reveals a level of supreme arrogance,” Perkins said in a statement. “Once again, Judge Crabb has neglected to consult the Constitution that she was sworn to uphold.”

Perkins went on to say that this is another example of “banishing God from the public square.”

* * *

On Friday, a federal judge ruled that the tax exemption which gives clergy the ability to write off housing expenses from their federal taxes is unconstitutional. According to a report from Religious News Service,

U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Crabb ruled on Friday (Nov. 22) in favor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, saying the exemption violates the establishment clause because it “provides a benefit to religious persons and no one else, even though doing so is not necessary to alleviate a special burden on religious exercise.”

The housing allowances of pastors in Wisconsin, where the ruling was made, remain currently unaffected as the ruling has been stayed by the judge until appeals are exhausted.

The court’s ruling says that the tax exemption for housing violates the establishment cause because it grants a special privilege to clergy and thus amounts to preferential treatment for religion. It warns that such treatment could easily be turned on its head: “…if the government were free to grant discriminatory tax exemptions in favor of religion, then it would be free to impose discriminatory taxes against religion as well.”

The RNS article notes that Rick Warren of Saddleback Church was engaged in a dispute with the IRS for ten years over a charge that he owed back taxes related to his housing. Pastor Warren won the case, and rules for the clergy housing allowance were clarified as a result of the decision.

Though I am not now enjoying this tax exemption, I did for many years, and may one day qualify for it again. The way it works is this:

In advance, a church board can designate a portion of their ordained pastor’s salary as housing allowance.
“Housing” includes anything spent to provide, furnish and maintain a house. If the church furnishes a parsonage, then the fair rental value of the house is to be considered when calculating housing costs.
If the pastor makes $50,000, for example, and the board designates $20,000 of that to cover the minister’s housing expenses, then the pastor pays federal income taxes on $30,000 if he or she spends the full 20K on housing expenses. If $18,000 is spent, then the pastor would be responsible for paying taxes on $32,000.
The housing allowance portion of the minister’s salary is exempt from federal income taxes, but not from social security taxes (unless he or she has opted out of the program for religious reasons). So, when figuring his or her social security tax responsibility, it must be calculated on the entire $50,000.

The opinion of the court regarding this benefit was clearly stated:

Although it is undoubtedly true that taxes impose a burden on ministers, the same is true for all taxpayers. Defendants do not identify any reason why a requirement on ministers to pay taxes on a housing allowance is more burdensome for them than for the many millions of others who must pay taxes on income used for housing expenses. In any event, the Supreme Court has rejected the view that the mere payment of a generally applicable tax may qualify as a substantial burden on free exercise.

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Let’s discuss.

The Homily

“Oh, how I love your law. I meditate on it all day long.”— Psalm 119:97

“So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.”—Galatians 3:24

These days, the “Law” is almost a dirty word among Christians, particularly those who’ve been around for a while and who’ve suffered the hurts perpetrated upon them by legalistic churches and legalistic people. For all we like to talk about God’s grace, we view it suspiciously and practice it begrudgingly. In many cases, we even hold it at arm’s length from ourselves, watching it dangle tantalizingly and painfully, just out of soul’s reach. Lord, I am not worthy, we beat ourselves up over and over. No … we are not.

When once we get a prison break from the Law and the whiff of freedom that comes from realization that our justification is not won in law keeping, but in Christ having fulfilled the Law, we tend to run from captivity like wild animals fleeing cages for the forest, never looking back and anxious to put great distance between us and what held us for so long. Understood.

Nevertheless, it begins to dawn on us that the Law is not a curse to flee, but a gift to treasure. Even though we have come to Christ and might be tempted to think the Law is no longer useful, the reality is that we are every day still coming to Christ and it is the Law that reminds us that we are always and forever in need of him.

Unfortunately, we view and communicate the Law as an enemy much of the time. In fact, it’s more like one of those friends comfortable enough to tell us the uncomfortable truth. I have one of those friends … direct and sometimes irritating, but always refreshingly honest. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (708), the Law, powerless to save us, goes right ahead and reminds us that we are “deprived of the divine likeness” and inflicts a “growing awareness of sin.”

Deprived of the divine likeness … an idea filled with import. Yes, we are formed in the image of God, but scarred, marred and disfigured by sin. Until we encounter the Law, we somehow believe we are normal, looking just as we should. In truth, we are only shadows and shells, empty of the glory of God. The Father desires to mature and complete us, to make us not just living creatures, but sons and daughters … children for his glory. “I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth—everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made” (Isaiah 43:6,7). This is the divine intention, truly a height we can hardly imagine and even less, achieve. The Law hurts us with its revelation, but without it we would be forever doomed to our disfigurement.

When God knew us in his mind before he founded the earth, he imagined us as displays of his splendor. We become that in time and space by virtue of the indwelling Spirit recreating Christlife in our mortal flesh. We only have the indwelling Spirit as we call upon Christ to save us. And we only call upon Christ to save us when we see our disfigurement juxtaposed against the perfection of the Law. It is true the Law does fail to save us, but it does not fail to take us by the hand and lead us to the Savior. God forbid that we should run from it, but rather that we should get on our knees and thank him for his great and good gift of the Law. Without it, we would not know him.

Let us pray.

Saturday Ramblings 11.23.13

Welcome to our pre-Thanksgiving edition of Saturday Ramblings. Oh, big doings are afoot here at the iMonastery. Adam Palmer is in charge of the turkey this year, even though in the past he’s been caught trying to glue a bucket of KFC together to form one large bird. Chaplain Mike is making the gravy—which was a mistake, because he keeps muttering “There’s more of gravy than grave about you” as he stirs. First Lady Denise is bringing something called Kentucky Burgoo. We’re not sure if that is something you eat or drink, but we’re a thankful lot, so thank you, Denise. Lisa, Damaris and Martha are in charge of dessert. If we are smart, that is all we’ll eat. Me? I’m setting the table with paper plates and sporks. Now that our tummies are in countdown mode, what say we ramble?

In case you missed it (because you were making your own pot of burgoo), yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the death of President John F. Kennedy. Here is a good story about the priest who administered the last rites to the dying president. And just what did preachers in Dallas say two days later to their shocked and stunned congregations? Here are a few snippets from their sermons that day. This is the stand-out to me: “Much of the hate and discord that has been poisoning our nation has been preached in the name of Christ and the church. In Dallas entire sermons have been devoted to damning the Kennedy administration and the United Nations, and they have been delivered from Methodist pulpits. In the name of the church, men and women have sown seeds of discord, distrust and hate and have called it witnessing for Christ. As a church we are sick. God have mercy on us.”

Speaking of, Larry Tomczak posts an open letter where he asks if President Obama is really a Christian. See the above sermon outtake for my thoughts on the matter.

Ruh-roh. Seems Mark Driscoll may have “borrowed” not only ideas, but a lot of words from another author for his latest book. Christian radio talk show host Janet Mefferd accused Driscoll of plagiarism this week on her show, saying he stole from Peter Jones. Live by the pen, die by the pen.

Snake Salvation, the “reality” TV show that features snake handling in a church in Tennessee, may have to resort to reruns for a while. Seems wildlife officials have confiscated the more than 50 poisonous snakes the church had lying around. Now what will I watch on TV until the next season of Downton Abbey arrives?

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Anatomy Of A Conspiracy

Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (It is also, ironically enough, the 50th anniversary of the deaths of C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley.) Anytime someone is murdered there are many questions to be answered; when it is one of the most powerful men in the world who has been killed, the questions multiply many times over. The mystery surrounding President Kennedy’s death has not been, in many people’s minds, solved even after five decades. The conspiracy theories run the gamut from Mafia hit men to Lyndon Johnson contracting to have the president killed to a the CIA ordering a “termination.” The Warren Commission concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in shooting Kennedy, and Jack Ruby acted alone in shooting Oswald two days later. Yet the Warren Commission’s report, as thorough as it was, has not satisfied those who insist there is more behind the story. Today if you do a Google search for “JFK conspiracy theories,” you will get 115,000,000 results (in just .39 seconds).

We humans are curious. “That’s just how it is” has never been a good enough explanation for what we don’t understand. We couldn’t see across the ocean, so we built boats that allowed us to explore beyond the horizon. We didn’t know what was on top of mountains, so we found a way to climb up to see for ourselves. Even the moon begged us to find a way to explore its surface.

When we read, hear about, or experience something we don’t understand, we search for an explanation. Sometimes it is a simple matter, involving only ourselves. But when the situation is more complex and involves many people—and maybe even takes places over a long period of time—the facts are not as easily discerned. This is where a conspiracy theory enters the picture.

A good conspiracy theory seeks to explain something we may not have even known needed explaining. It will try to impose order on a chaotic situation, even if the explanation stretches credulity to the breaking point. We can’t understand how Oswald could have gotten off that lucky shot from an awkward angle at the Texas School Book Depository, so we come up with a theory that involves more than one gunman. It helps us to makes sense of the senseless.

Continue reading “Anatomy Of A Conspiracy”

A Brief Lesson for Speakers

150 years ago this week, Abraham Lincoln gave “dedicatory remarks” at Gettysburg, Pennysylvania to consecrate the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, four months after the Battle of Gettysburg.

Considered perhaps the most important speech in U.S. history, the president’s remarks contained —

272 words,
10 sentences,
and lasted less than 3 minutes.

Earlier, Edward Everett had offered the main speech of the day — the Gettysburg Oration — which contained over 13,000 words. His speech lasted more than 2 hours.

Guess which speech we remember?

Did you hear any news this week about celebrating the anniversary of the Gettysburg Oration?

When speaking, say it well and keep it brief.

At my college graduation, the commencement speaker told those of us who were going to be ministers, “If you don’t strike oil in 20 minutes, stop boring.”

Lincoln hit the mother lode in 3 minutes, and the oil is still flowing.

The Pastor: Prepared by the Lord’s Prayer

St-Peter-healing-a-cripple-and-the-raising-of-Tabitha-1427-xx-Tommaso-Masolino-da-Panicale — The Healing of the Cripple and the Raising of Tabitha, Masolino

Let the pastors of the assemblies know this priesthood of the assembly on behalf of the world. Let them know with sympathy and love how they are not distinguished here from the rest of humanity, but are rather a voice of need and prayer. Let them thus know where they actually are and what time it is in the world. Let them see that an insertion in the actual local situation of their communities, a knowledge of the news, the ability to weep and laugh with real people, attention to such literature and film and other arts as honestly evoke current estimations of the human condition, awareness of the state of the local land and wildlife — all these are preparations for the assembly and its leadership, all of these are spiritual practices for the pastor, all of these accord with the spirituality of the Lord’s Prayer. Then, let the pastors also come to the assembly as beggars for the sake of themselves and the world. Let them not imagine their vestments or their ritual practice as anything else than an underlining of the significance of this prayer on behalf of the world. A pastor prepares to lead Christian liturgy by imagining, understanding, interiorizing this purpose of the assembly to be a priesthood for the world.

– Gordon Lathrop
The Pastor: A Spirituality

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How should a pastor prepare to lead the congregation in worship?

For Gordon Lathrop, that question means: How should a pastor prepare to preside in the liturgy? In his book, The Pastor: A Spirituality, Lathrop primarily addresses ministers who serve liturgical traditions. And while I think any pastor could glean helpful insights from this book as one who leads in other ways in the congregation’s public gatherings, this book takes seriously the form of the traditional liturgy and the concept of presiding.

Lathrop suggests that the Lord’s Prayer is so central to the Church’s historic worship that it may be seen as a symbol for the liturgy itself. He recommends it as a primary text that can help presiders and congregations alike as they prepare for worship.

The communal form of the Lord’s Prayer (“us” not “me”) reminds us of the corporate nature of worship. Its familiar, simple words are one of the prime catechetical passages that were entrusted to our parents to teach us when we were baptized. When we bow together before communion we say its words as our table grace. The words of the Lord’s Prayer also give a defining shape to who we are as Christian assembly. We are people of the last days, sharers in God’s Kingdom, who long for, pray for, and work, by God’s Spirit, for its fulfillment in the world.

It is at this point that Gordon Lathrop says something exceedingly wise and challenging for ministers and their congregations:

According to this prayer, the community of Christians is, in very basic ways, just like everyone else — longing for God, in need of mercy, justice, and life, hopeful, fearful, likely to fail. Yet in two characteristics of its real assemblies — in shared bread and in mutual forgiveness — it trusts that God is already making it the assembly of the end time, the assembly around God’s promised life-giving feast for all the world.

I fear that many Christians view “worship” as a time to separate ourselves from the world, to conduct “family business,” to draw aside from the demands of life in order to experience a few moments of sanctuary and respite. We gather in our building, sing our songs, read from our book, come to our table. Here the language of Zion is spoken, the air of heaven inhaled. Sure, we may be challenged here to go back out and live as Christians in the world, but this appeal often carries with it unspoken assumptions about how different we are from our neighbors — They are the needy. We have the answers. We, having been recharged and refilled, will bring God to them!

There are elements of truth in all of this, but the simple fact is that the Lord’s Prayer will not allow us to stand apart from our neighbors. Rather: “By such a prayer,” Gordon Lathrop says, “Christians stand with all humanity, in its need and in its fear. In such a prayer, the church exercises its priesthood for the world, making the ‘our’ and the ‘us’ of the petitions as broad as it can imagine.” In full sympathy with our neighbors, we give voice to a common hunger, a shared sense of guilt and reflex for vengeance, and fears we all have about the uncertain future and our ability to face it.

Cappella_brancacci,_Predica_di_San_Pietro_(restaurato),_Masolino — St. Peter Preaching (detail), Masolino

We pray as ordinary people in need and as people who bear the needs of others before God.

In the end, worship is about forgiveness and bread. This is how God’s kingdom comes and God’s will done on earth as in heaven.

In worship we gather to hear that word and come to that table — over and over again.

And when we gather, unless our hearts are hardened by self-righteous forgetfulness, we won’t be able to savor that which is given to us without remembering others who go hungry and naked.

When the pastor allows the Lord’s Prayer to seize his or her heart, when the minister’s own hunger, brokenness, and anxiety is felt, when the presider is reimmersed once more in the reality of God’s rule in Jesus Christ and in full identification with the neighbor in need, the pastor is prepared, ready to worship with the congregation.

Not ready because he or she has mastered a role, but because God’s grace has overwhelmed the heart and left a taste of bread and wine in the mouth.

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This is part two of a series on Gordon Lathrop’s book. Read part one of our meditations on The Pastor: A Spirituality:

The Pastor: Tasks, Titles, and Texts

“I remember it as dark”

Today, as part of my hospice duties, I will be with a family whose ten-month old child died. I will have to come up with some words for the parents, the other children, the extended family and friends, and members of our care team. Mostly I will go to be with them, to mourn with them.

The child died over the weekend, as Gail and I were on our way out of town. I was able to delay my departure long enough to go to the home, hug mom and dad, and sit with them for a few minutes to hear what happened. They were stunned and numb. Though the baby had been expected to live only a few weeks, she lived almost a year. She was never a “normal” baby, but she gained weight and seemed to be stable. Then mom found her in her crib lifeless. The breath had gone out of her. In a moment.

We were as surprised as they were, and had to rally our minds to shift from caring gear into comforting. We thought we would have time to make the transition more slowly. As Michael Spencer wrote, there is always a “day before” when we have no clue. And sometimes the next day comes as a thief in the night.

I am reading (and will soon report on) Wendell Berry’s luminous novel, Hannah Coulter. In it I found a descriptive passage about grief that is so true it almost hurts to read it.

It is hard for me to think or speak of the time that came then. I remember it as dark. I can’t remember the sun shining, though I’m sure it must have shone part of the time. I would think sometimes with a black sickness of fear and hopelessness and guilt, “What am I doing alive?”…

…The pleasures that came then had a way of reminding you that they had been pleasures once upon a time, when it seemed that you had a right to them. Happiness had a way of coming to you and making you sad. You would think, “There seems to have been a time when I deserved such a happiness and needed it, like a day’s pay, and now I have no use for it at all.” How can you be happy, how can you live, when all the things that make you happy grieve you nearly to death?

A sort of heartbreaking kindness grew then between me and Mr. and Mrs. Feltner [her dead husband’s parents]. It grew among us all. It was a kindness of doing whatever we could think of that might help or comfort one another. But it was a kindness too of forbearance, of not speaking, of not reminding. And that care of not reminding reminded us, every day, always, of what we could not mention without being overpowered and destroyed. That kindness kept us alive, I think, but it was a hardship too. Sometimes I would have to go to be by myself, in my room or outdoors somewhere, just to get away from it.

…We knew, always, more than we said. One of us lying awake in the night would know that the others were probably lying awake too, but nobody ever said so. In the daytime it seemed to me that we were all kept standing upright, balanced ever so delicately, by our kind silence. Sometimes it seemed that one word, one outcry, would flatten us all.

…Love held us. Kindness held us. We were suffering what we were living by.

May God comfort us in all our sorrows.

David Cornwell: I Love to Tell the Story

8096996941_2876c279cd_z — Leaves against the Sky, by David Cornwell

Note from CM: I’m thrilled to have our regular commenter and resident sage David Cornwell contributing today. Dave, with his experience, insight, and encouraging manner, adds depth to our discussions on a regular basis. He also takes amazing photographs, samples of which you can see here. Enjoy more at his Flickr page.

* * *

Uncle John would come visit us when we were growing up. He was my father’s uncle, thus being my great uncle. He was from out of town, and only came now and then, and in the summer. It was always a treat for us, because he was different. This was in the 1950’s, and he had an old bus of an even earlier date, that he had converted into a traveling home. He was an amateur photographer, had a large collection of cameras, and a darkroom in the bus. He would go to Florida for part of the year, or wherever else he might want to go. I think he had a “normal” home somewhere also, but I was never sure of its location.

When he would visit we would all stay up late, into the dark of night and talk. Uncle John, my father, and us four boys would go into the front yard. There we would sit on the glider on the porch, the stairs, and the big swing under the Catalpa tree. Then we would talk. Or rather Uncle John and my father would talk. And they would tell stories about the people they knew, some from years ago. Most of them were family, or those who touched the family one way or another. And my brothers and I would listen.

My mother’s side of the family would visit also. And we would hear news of births, deaths, troubles, and whatever else was new. So it was a world of uncles and aunts and cousins, talk and fun. This was family life back then. The story became part of us and thus we became part of the story.

Being a Christian is not about following a particular brand of theology, being a member of a certain denomination, or a local church. Often we have turned it into arguments about all these things, and in so doing are missing the real point. Rather being a Christian is about being part of a story, the most important story, and the only entirely truthful story ever told. And if we are not part of it, then it calls out to us to become a part.

Paul J. Wadell, Professor of Religious Studies at Saint Norbert College writes in Christology and the Christian Life that “a fitting way to understand the Christian life in light of Christ is to see it as being initiated into, and remaining faithful to, the story of God that is Jesus.” He goes on to point out that we as fledgling Christians become part of that story at baptism.

Of course this story’s beginning is not one we write as we step into it, for its first chapters are what we find in biblical accounts. As Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon point out in Resident Aliens the bible is, at its most basic, the “story of a people’s journey with God.”

The story had its beginning with ancient Israel, who would learn it mostly by heart, and then come together for the retelling. And in the telling “Israel comes to see itself as a people on a journey, and adventure.”

And thus we begin to see that “story is the fundamental means of talking about and listening to God, the only human means available to us that is complex and engaging enough to make comprehensible what it means to live with God.”

Continue reading “David Cornwell: I Love to Tell the Story”

Of Swords And Plowshares

I am old. Not so much old-fashioned as just old. So when I say I am seeing things now I didn’t see growing up, there is a lot of water that has passed under the bridge of time. I’m not talking about the horseless carriage (I’m not that old), nor even the cell phone (but I do remember the bag phone).

I’m talking about churches using armed guards during worship services.

In the church I attended until recently, an off-duty police officer is hired to be present for both Sunday morning services. He wears a shirt proclaiming him a police officer, and his gun is clearly on display. He even passes the plate when ushers are in short supply.

I know a man who is the fulltime bodyguard and security officer at a small megachurch here in town. He has his revolver concealed under his suit coat, and has an earpiece allowing him to listen to others who are watching video monitors and communicating any potential threats to the pastor. He walks the pastor to and from the stage area, making sure no one gets too close.

Then there is the largest church in my town. They employ a small army of uniformed police officers both inside and outside of the church building. They are unsmiling reminders not to make any sudden moves or, heaven forbid, attempt to take a child under the age of two into the sanctuary. (Really—you’re not allowed to do that.) And as this preacher does not ever mix with the congregation, there are plainclothes security personnel to keep you on your side and God’s anointed ones on their side.

I cannot ever recall seeing armed guards in a church service until after the turn of the millennium. There probably were some in some churches before then, but now it seems it has become a status symbol. You know, “My church has more guns than your church.” Who wants to attend a church where there are no badges on display?

Yes, I know that there have been a few instances of people being shot while in a church service. But if you take all of the services conducted in our nation every Sunday, and multiply that times 52 weeks in a year, I think you have a better chance of being selected for the first mission to Mars than you do encountering a gunman in church this or any year. It would be a different case if you went to church in Egypt or Nigeria, but across our land, I am not sure I see the need for the sword in a worship service.

I wrote on Sunday about becoming vulnerable. What kind of message do we send when we have guards to put up the facade of all things being under control, of everything being safe? Is that what God calls the church to be?

I am going to let you flesh this out. What are your thoughts on armed guards in church services? A necessary evil in the world we live in today? Or is it an attempt to control what we need to leave in God’s hands?

Adam McHugh: Thank You and Goodnight – My Farewell to Hospice

Note from CM: What a privilege to have Adam McHugh writing monthly for us here at IM. When I first read today’s article, I told Adam that I would be filing it away for the day when I too take the step he describes here. I’m not sure anyone could say it any better.

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Thank You and Goodnight: My Farewell to Hospice
By Adam McHugh

Tonight I worked my very last shift as a hospice chaplain. It is midnight, my shift ended 11 minutes ago, and I am writing a blog post while my thoughts are fresh. I’m planning on going deep into the night, just as I have so many times when I’ve been on-call. And then on Friday I’m going to resume my previous life as a morning person.

I’m wearing my badge around my neck, for the very last time, as I write this. As another nod to sentiment, I just returned from a late night Del Taco run, which I have done probably 50 times between the hours ofmidnight and 6am in the last 2 years. Many times I circled the drive-thru just because it comforted me to know that other people were working at that time of night. While most of you have been oh-so-selfishly sleeping in your warm beds during these shadowless hours, some of us had to keep the world running. Big Fat Chicken tacos don’t make themselves, you know.

I also just left my last voice mail for the team I worked for tonight. I ended it with “Peace out suckers!!” No one will laugh when they hear it. Hospice workers just aren’t funny.

It’s all but impossible to capture the experiences, the feelings, and the interactions that have formed these last 25 months. There is no way that I can fully describe what it feels like to go to bed with a beeper (yes, a beeper) next to your ear, and have it scream you out of sleep at 3am, like a rooster who’s been doping. And that’s only the preface to the terrors of what comes next: “Adam, there is a family who lost someone tonight and they’re not coping well. The nurse needs your help for spiritual and psychological support. Oh, and their house is 50 minutes away from you, in east L.A. Tell us when you’re finished, because we may have another visit after that for you.”

When I told people I was a hospice chaplain, they would give me one of two responses. Either they would be absolutely mortified and look at me as though I were an alien from outer space, or else they would be incredibly moved and give me a hug. One time an old couple bought me a bottle of Syrah and a 20oz Rib eye after they found out what I did. One time a woman scowled and walked away after she found out what I did. One time a child yelled “I hate you!!”, stomped on my foot, and ran away. I might have made that last one up.

But the extreme responses I received from others only echoed the contradictions that I experienced within myself. Hospice has been the best thing that ever happened to me. Hospice has been the worst thing that ever happened to me. Sometimes I feel like I have seen too much. Sometimes I feel like I have seen exactly what I needed to see. I feel like my heart grew 3 sizes. I feel like I left pieces of my heart all over Pasadena, and Monterey Park, and Pomona. I had days where I felt like taking off my shoes because I stood on holy ground. I had days where I felt like putting on layer after layer because I felt naked.

Continue reading “Adam McHugh: Thank You and Goodnight – My Farewell to Hospice”