Last night as we were getting ready for the Cocoa Cinnamon tasting, Leon had a plastic bottle filled with sand from the Sahara he had brought home from time spent in Tunisia and Morocco. He poured some into a brass Turkish coffee pot and let us touch it. The sand was somehow fine and coarse…

Many years ago, I wrote a song that began, “Here’s another picture of love . . . ” Tonight, we added several more photographs to that album as Areli and Leon from Cocoa Cinnamon did a coffee, tea, and chocolate tasting at our house as a way of preparing us for the awesome coffee shop…

First Fig    My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light!   — Edna St. Vincent Millay I have kept my practice of a Lenten journal now for many years. This, however, is the first year I have…

In my post yesterday I quoted from Bruce Springsteen’s keynote address at South-by- Southwest, which I would like to repeat: The purity of human expression and experience is not confined – there’s no pure way of doing it; there’s just doing it . . . . At the end of the day, it’s the power…

Next Sunday I am going to be a part of a bluegrass group that will be the service musicians for our morning worship. Most of the group is one family – parents and three boys, all of whom play instruments. The youngest one, who is six or seven, plays the mandolin likes it’s part of…

when I walked outside this morningthere was enough moisture in the airfrom last night’s thunderstormto make me feel close to the oceanand aware of my place in the world the lettuces that lived throughwhat passes for winter around herehave gone to flowering, a displayof well-deserved botanical arroganceand I am aware of my place . ….

there are days I lay awakeat night and wonder even worry about what’s to comebecause the future feels like a past due account and I have already spent my timethinking about tomorrowputting the tense in present there are nights like thiswhen I fall asleep holding on to the day like the last bite of the…

If I still lived in BostonI would see spring bloomsinside — at the Flower Show –here in Carolina the daffodilsare well into their paradethe peach tree has budded . . .I like the feel of the sunon my neck and, yes, I missthe prospect of snow onEaster Sunday Morningfollowed by the flowersCreation’s resonance toGod’s emphatic…

On February 5, 1989, I took Ginger to see Lyle Lovett at the Caravan of Dreams in downtown Fort Worth. The club was small and we sat on the front row. Tonight, I took Ginger to see Lyle Lovett for the twenty-third time in our twenty-three years together – and we sat on the front…

“Study the faces of the new tyrants,” Berger says has he begins the last section of his book, Bento’s Sketchbook: How Does the Impulse to Draw Something Begin? What follows is a series of incisive descriptions: They are impeccably dressed and their tailoring is reassuring, like the silhouette of high-security delivery vans. They have foreheads…