I could hear rain in mid-December days die incrementally losing light almost from the crack of dawn suffocate them with a blanket of clouds and the only light that lives is artificial still light is not life or so I was reminded when I realized I could hear the rain not just the storm but…
interstices the space between trees the crack in the mortar the time between floors if we took away the spaces between us among us the universe would collapse into a fist the rest between notes the breath before words the pause to ponder intervening emptinesses waiting to be noticed to be seen as something other…
ritual in search of significance the last thing I do before I go to bed is to disconnect my implant and hearing aid and enter into quietness it is necessary action because both my batteries and my body need to recharge so I settle into silence each device has a cradle where it rests for…
The woman in my poem from a couple of nights ago made it into my sermon today. She has still been on my mind. ___________________________ Sometimes when I look at the lectionary passages I wonder about the committee that put it together. I learned this week that the Common Lectionary for Protestant churches only came…
breakfast potatoes in our favorite breakfast joint on the way home from the hospital for the first time in a long time I heard the sound of one chef chopping the rhythm of the knife beating in my new ear a sound my brain knows by heart when I caught his eye I asked, “making…
fear factor it was not long after the third doctor came by to tell me it would be another hour until I was taken back to the operating room that the woman in the next cubicle began to assert herself “I want to leave” a sentiment shared on almost every stretcher but she was serious…
ablation the word rings in my ears like a rite or a ritual though I am not sure exactly what role I play it means “a carrying away” in its oldest form though medically it’s “a removal of something harmful” they will carry away broken bits of my heart to restore its rhythm that sounds…
Since I had my cochlear implant surgery eight weeks ago, I have been writing a poem a day to help me reflect on what is happening to me and my hearing. This is today’s poem. cartography we forget the word map is short for mappa mundi map of the world or perhaps map of a…
Everything that is going on in the Brasher-Cunningham household alongside of Advent beginning before we were finished with Thanksgiving leftovers mean I am a day late beginning my annual Advent Journal, which starts this year with my sermon from yesterday, “Mooing at Kyle.” I hope your Advent is full of hope and wonder. _____________________ We…
It’s been a while since I posted a sermon, mostly because all of the medical stuff I have been dealing with has made what I have offered from the pulpit less than postable. But I’m back and talking about the birds and flowers that Jesus pointed to as examples of how to be human. _____________________________…