As Ginger and I traveled home from my father’s funeral, we tried to imagine what life would be like for my mother who had lost her traveling companion of almost sixty years. They loved being together. It was their favorite thing. Then we tried to imagine what we would do without each other. It...
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For a long time now, the comma has been an important symbol for the United Church of Christ. You have to love a denomination that finds metaphor in punctuation. The idea started with the “God Is Still Speaking” campaign that played off of a Gracie Allen quote—“Never put a period where God has placed...
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light matters I stopped at the sink to rinse out my coffee cup at the very instant that the rising sun shot anticipatory flames of color from below the horizon, igniting the clouds with incendiary hope for just a minute . . . . Before I could call you to the window the fire...
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Uncle Howard and I met for breakfast again this morning, as has been my lenten custom thus far, and he woke me with these words: Again and again, we are impressed with the fact that little things can make big differences. A little act of kindness at a moment of great need makes all...
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In my job as an editor, some days are big picture days and some days are detail days. Today was the latter. I spent most of it making sure certain words were where they were supposed to be, page after page. It’s not the most glamorous work, but one of the reasons I know...
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I’ve allowed myself to become stuck in the aftermath of both the campaign and the election. The volume of discourse has been overwhelming, even when those talking on the same side. Opinions about everything from sexism to safety pins feel as though most all of them are shouted. I haven’t wanted to join in,...
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I started a new Wendell Berry essay this morning, knowing I didn’t really have the energy to read the whole thing, and he still got me with his opening paragraphs: A sentence of my own, written thirteen years ago, has stayed in my mind. In it, I was speaking of the connection between my...
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The day has been long, not because of anything other than the passing of time, I suppose. I worked at the computer store and came home tired. I have searched for words for a couple of hours now and found them already written by others. I offer three poems that spoke to me tonight,...
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One of the things that helped me today was a blog post by a woman named Katherine that made the rounds on a couple of Facebook feeds that I follow offering ways to respond to the mess of a world we live in these days. Here are some of the suggestions that stuck out...
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My friend Paul pointed me to an article in the New York Times that has stuck with me for several days now titled “Bringing a Daughter Back From the Brink With Poetry.” The author told a simple story of how she worked to reach out to her teenage daughter as she was going through...
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