Author Archives: bjdueholm
Ordination Anniversary, 2017
Here’s me at my ordination on this day in 2009. Back when I was preparing for ordination, I fancied myself a somewhat unlikely pastor. Then I learned that there really is no such thing as a likely pastor anymore, so I may as well get over that conceit and figure out how to do this job. […]
Sermon: Holy Cross Day
I preached this sermon on September 14, 2014. Now, as I mentioned earlier we are not a society that is very interested in wisdom. The church in Corinth seems to have been divided over the question of who had true wisdom, which is not something we’re likely to lose friends over. We are, on the […]
Chicago Diarist: A Drunkard’s Home Companion
(I wrote this in August, 2006) Last Friday I made it to the Music Box for the first time in far too long to catch the midnight showing of Big Time, the Tom Waits concert film of 1988. A friend and I stopped at a Southport watering hole for a couple quick glasses of Irish whiskey before the […]
My Back Pages: Iftar with the DuPage Republicans
(A version of this appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi, in September 2009. It is not longer extant and their site, so I have posted it here). In the years following the attacks of September 11, 2001, enthusiasm for interfaith iftar events swept America’s liberal Christians. When I was studying theology, an interfaith iftar – […]
Chicago Diarist: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi
(I wrote this in January, 2007) My literary production, such as it is (and as far as I may use the term without self-mockery), is highly dependent on the CTA. Back when I still tried to write poetry, a conversation about a dead man overheard on a bus furnished the matter of one of the […]
Sermon Playback: Speaking of Satan
I preached this sermon three years ago on this weekend’s text (Matthew 16): And for Christians, this may be our special temptation and our special sin. It is to refuse Jesus as he offers himself to us. It is to look for or hope for or expect a different Jesus than the one who comes […]
Memory’s Neighborhoods
I wrote about the different ways, and places, we’ve chosen to commemorate the Civil War and its aftermath for the Washington Post: The truth is that there is a great deal of history we have chosen, or allowed ourselves, to forget. The Fort Pillow garrison, I learned, consisted not only of whites and former slaves […]
Preaching Notebook: Flesh and Blood
I was stunned and saddened to see this post from Freddie deBoer on Sunday: My day-to-day existence has become entirely unmanageable, and I fear for my health and safety. I do not have much of a plan at this point other than to get checked in. When I am back out I will try to […]
Wisconsin Diarist: Good Night, Ann B., Wherever You Are
(I wrote this in September, 2010) The siding industry should be alerted to the existence of Hudson, Wisconsin. I had occasion to pass through my old hometown last weekend, and I was struck by how little my neighborhood had changed, architecturally, since we moved away in 1990. It is a river town, your last stop […]
My Back Pages: The Guy Who Came Into the Cold
(I wrote this for The National in Abu Dhabi in February, 2009. It is no longer extant on their site, so I am posting it here) Just over a hundred years ago my father’s family settled in the town of Luck in northern Wisconsin. Winter descends there in October or November and lingers until April […]
Brutally Ordinary Things 