south of here the boys of summer are planting the seeds of spring thawing out their throwing arms weeding out all the errors they can practicing and pitching, stealing a little extra daylight each evening in a month they will head north (at least the ones I care about) along with daylight and daffodils to…
As I have gone about my day, the story weaving in and out of all of it has been the Pope’s retirement. To listen to the reporters, this is a day like none other in history. For the first time in six hundred years, someone has ceased to be the Bishop of Rome without ceasing…
The important thing is that you have a lot of skin cells. Of those billions of skin cells, between 30,000 and 40,000 of them fall off every hour. Over a 24-hour period, you lose almost a million skin cells. Where do they all go? The dust that collects on your tables, TV, windowsills and on…
After a second day of rain here in Durham, something struck me I had never thought of before: the Gospel writers don’t say much about the weather. I even spent some time doing a little research. Other than the “windstorm” that swept across the Sea of Galilee (Luke 8) and a storm on Paul’s journey…
My friend, Nathan Brown, is a poet and musician who was named the Poet Laureate of Oklahoma last fall. During December, as we dealt with the impending doom of the Mayan calendar, I dubbed him the Poet Laureate of the Apocalypse. He continues to be a good friend and a wonderful encourager to me in…
One of my morning rituals is to read the Writer’s Almanac. When we lived in Massachusetts, in played on WBUR as I was going to work; here in Durham I read the text on the website. Besides a daily dose of poetry, Garrison Keillor also mentions two or three significant birthdays or anniversaries. Today is…
I wasn’t planning on being a cultural critic when I sat down to write, but the week has been long and I am tired. I didn’t come to the desk with a ripe idea; my mind felt as blank as the page in front of me. So I went looking for other words or, should…
Ginger and I went to the movie the other afternoon and as we were coming out of the film I mentioned it reminded me of a friend from Fort Worth who was a minister at another church whom I used to call in the middle of the afternoon and get him to go to the…
My church is on a roll. Not too many weeks ago, we spent three Sunday nights together for “Forgetting But Not Forgotten: Alzheimer’s and Faith,” which attracted over eighty people each week. On Tuesday of this week, we began a four week Lenten series, “Poverty in Durham: A Faith Perspective.” Twenty-seven percent of our children…
There are some nights I sit down to write what has been brewing all day, then there are others where I begin with a blank canvas and try to get quiet enough to see what ripens. Tonight’s poem comes at the end of a busy day when I don’t feel as though I had time…