The magi show up every January and those of us who step into pulpits are expected to talk about them. Here’s where their journey took me this year. ____________________________ The magi are among my favorite characters that show up in the story of Jesus’ birth because we don’t really know who they were. Some translators…
route map the four-gate airport in New Haven (travel-sized, my friend Mandy says) announced new routes to five cities and it made me wonder how many new connections I have made lately or what it means to be an airport even if it is only metaphorically a place of connection with lines arcing across the…
epiphany I’m working on a sermon about the saddled sages who were sane enough to follow stars and wise enough to ignore the king’s directions and find another way home I used to see a desert sky as their background but recent years have given me the view of rioters climbing Herod’s walls as the…
trash talking after staying up late to watch the ball drop and listen to musicians I didn’t recognize we did not need fireworks lightning lit up the sky and the rain fell like it was washing the world so far this morning I have fed pups drank coffee done Wordle (NERVE) and written these words…
This week sermon looked at two texts, one from Luke and one from Colossians. Alongside of the reality that we don’t know much about how Jesus grew up is the picture of who he grew up to be: who he became. How do we continue to become, to grow? ___________________ One of the realizations that…
role call were I to place myself in the story I think I would choose to be a shepherd who did not have to prepare a thing they simply abided watching sheep sleep until the angel choir burst into star song and sent them sprinting towards Bethlehem and then they went back to abiding that…
The last Sunday in Advent is always a hard one for me because it’s hard to find something fresh to say, which is why I bounced off of a passage from Philippians today. Here’s where it took me. ____________________ I’m going to take a risk with you this morning: I’m going to start two sermons…
solstice sandwich today was the thinnest of daylight sandwiches the shortest distance between two darknesses last night it began to snow but it was another thinness icing across the landscape an inconsequential covering tonight is the thickest of nighttime sandwiches the widest distance between two daylights tomorrow the sun will rise and it will be…
chowder head I think coincidence and soup are synonyms both words mean to fall together it started with bacon that’s when I knew we were having chowder for supper I found potatoes and chopped clams even as I grabbed items as though I was gathering props for improv giving myself options I couldn’t see yet…
live and learn “the only way to learn is to live” the words came from a fictional librarian who lives in a story about consequences an old word that means what comes next after whatever we said or did or didn’t do which we can’t see until we live through it and that makes me…