Purity of heart is to will one thing. — Soren Kierkegaard This post has been on tap for years; I’ve come to feel the time to write it is now. On the one hand, however, I hardly feel I know what I’m talking about. I can see the goal, I can point to it, I can admire it, but I hardly have any idea how to get there. On the other hand, there are multiple directions from which to approach the subject, which fact doesn’t lend itself to the linear-sequential proneness of written w

Many people are skeptical about prayer. How many have prayed fervently, day and night, for an ailing loved one, and never obtained the desired outcome? The parable of the widow and the judge promises, “[W]ill not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.” For African Americans, that deserves to be laughable. No one has ever lived, nor is ever likely to live, more e