About

I had an image once that I couldn't shake. A very old stone building, surrounded by scaffolding. The scaffolding was collapsing. I wondered why that image was so persistent as I wrestled with my own faith. Gradually, I realized that the scaffolding was the systems, the frameworks, the tidy answers that we often associate with faith. I had always assumed the scaffolding was the building itself. But as it fell, the building stood. Old. Solid. Still there.

That image came to me during one of the harder seasons of my life. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The longer version

I spent thirty years as a pastor. I loved the preaching and the moments when someone saw and related to God more deeply. But I spent a lot of those years trying to be someone I wasn't. Accessible when I needed quiet. Certain when I was anything but. Fine when I was running on empty.

Eventually I couldn't keep it up.

What followed wasn't a clean transition. It was more like a floor giving way. Exhaustion first, then doubt. Doubt about ministry, sure, but really about everything. The existence and goodness of God. The faith I'd built my life on. I wasn't deconstructing as a project. I was just too worn out to pretend anymore.

That's when the scaffolding image came.

It didn't fix anything. But it gave me something to hold. The possibility that what I thought I was losing wasn't the building itself. And on the other side of that season, I found something I hadn't expected: a deeper faith, and a more reliable Jesus than I'd had before. It wasn’t recovered certainty.  It was both quieter and stronger.

Where I landed

I'm a hospice chaplain now. I sit with people at the end of their lives, or with the people who love them. Nobody pretends much at the bedside. You say what's true or you say nothing.

I'm also a spiritual director trained to accompany people who are trying to pay attention to God in the middle of real, complicated lives.

And I write. That started with a journal entry a few years ago when I realized I was worn out and lonely and didn't know how to talk honestly to God about it. I wrote it down. Then I thought maybe someone else needed to read it.

That's still why I write.

Who this is for

If you're tired of the show, the tidy answers, the pretend certainty, the phrases that used to mean something and now just hang in the air, you might find something here.

If some of your scaffolding is wobbly, or has already come down, and you're not sure whether anything is left standing, you might find something here.

I'm not going to tell you what to believe or promise you it all makes sense. But I think something true remains when everything else falls away. And I think it can hold more weight than we expect.

Glad you're here.

— Phil