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…
The best part of an idea is the conversation it creates. The last several days have created a conversation in my head and my Moleskine among folks who have yet to know they are talking to each other. I woke up this morning to a message from my friend, fellow Pilgrim, and self-described physics lover,…
I’ve continued my journey into The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us over the last couple of days and read something this morning that made me think of our lenten journey. Let me explain. In a chapter called “Ignoring the Content, Celebrating the Style,” James Pennybaker makes two points in an…
“Where Are We Going” Luke 4:1-13 A Sermon for Pilgrim United Church of Christ, Durham NC February 17, 2013 In these weeks since Epiphany, we have journeyed through Jesus’ baptism, his first miracle, and his sermon in his hometown of Nazareth. This morning we come to the story of the Temptations. (Jeremy, our accompanist, played…
I stood at the kitchen window and looked across the leftover dishes from last night’s dinner and out into the backyard because it was snowing free falling flakes the size of communion wafers dissolving as they hit the unfrozen ground ending their long lilting journey with nothing to show for it it felt important to…
My gift for Valentine’s Day — along with a box of SpongeBob SquarePants chocolates — was a trip to the Regulator to pick out a book. On the table of recent and notable books I found The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us by James W. Pennebaker. He is the head…
Last Sunday night, our church offered the last of a three week series called Forgetting but Not Forgotten: Alzheimer’s and Faith, the final gathering focusing on congregational responses to dementia. Lisa Gwyther the director of the Duke Alzheimer’s Family Support Program began the session by reciting a line from an Antonio Machado poem: traveler, there…
It was about this time three years ago when Ginger and I began making plans to move her parents here to Durham to live with us. Her father’s Alzheimer’s was progressing to the point that her mother couldn’t take care of him on her own and a nine hour drive was too far a distance…
I once heard a comedian say the only way to get to the good jokes was to push past the easy ones: go ahead and say all the double entendres, the terrible puns, and the sex — the obvious stuff — and then . . . only then — can you write great comedy. Perhaps…