I don’t know who said it, or where I first heard it, but for years I have remembered the First Rule of Theology: there is a God and it’s not me. I find comfort in that sentence. Being God looks like an incredibly difficult job. There’s something about the Incarnation that flips that statement over,…
Mark Strand died this week. He was a poet, even a former U. S. Poet Laureate. In the middle of the violence that makes up our world, it feels worthwhile to say thanks for the life and words of a poet who held a sense of appropriate insignificance with grace; therefore I offer two of…
I have been ruminating much of the day on a contrast presented to me by The Writer’s Almanac this morning. Along with the daily poem, they marked two anniversaries. In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the front of the bus to a white passenger. In 1913, Henry Ford introduced the…
As Advent begins, I am breaking my blog silence — which was not intentional. I have been writing, but my energy has been aimed at a new book called This Must Be the Place: Reflections on Home that will come out next fall thanks to the good folks at Morehouse Press. To be able to…
Fifty years ago today, I stood with a stadium filled with excited people to observe the birth of a new nation: Northern Rhodesia, a British colony, became Zambia, a free country. We had practiced the new national anthem for months in school, learned about the new currency. We were ready. We actually gathered in City…
This has been an important week in North Carolina, and our church has been at the center of things here in Durham. Here is a story that ran on our local NPR station, WUNC. Peace, Milton
I wish you could have been with me this weekend. It was end-of-summer-trying-to-be-fall weather in our little City of Encouragement, and it was the thirtieth North Carolina Pride Festival, which Durham has hosted for all three decades. One of the roles our church plays in the festivities is to host the Ecumenical Communion Service that…
I am old enough to remember when it was fun to fly, which, of course, makes me old. The experience of getting in and out of an airport, much less the time spent on board the airplane have not been very enjoyable for a long, long time. The “legacy carriers,” as they are often called, are…
There is no them. Only us: across the table, behind the wall, sharing coffee, passing the green beans, throwing stones, breaking curfew; armed to the teeth biting back with rubber bullets, cheering for little leaguers, praying for peace, marching in the night, hiding behind official jargon; joining in song, crying out for explanations, flying drones…
My friend John moved to Okinawa for a year. He’s on an academic sabbatical. He is also a master meat smoker. When he left he gave me a whole frozen packer brisket, ready for me to try my hand at smoking it. My friend Roberto, who owns Old Havana Sandwich Shop along with his wife…