When we moved into our house last summer, we moved into a home where the house had been fixed up (it was built in 1926), but the yard was – well – a trash heap, in the back at least. The front yard was mostly weeds, some prettier than others. Because we wanted Ginger’s dad…

Today was a cold and rainy day here in Durham. The sky never brightened beyond the dull gray of the clouds that rattled and wept most of the day. Here, where spring has arrived in full force, the temperature struggled to reach sixty degrees. In a week full of bright sunshine, the weather somehow knew…

Brothers and sisters, from where have you come? Such was the question that greeted us as we prepared to share Communion in our Maundy Thursday. Those of us scattered across the sanctuary had come from different places. The answer we were called to give in unison was compelling: We have come from the dust, and…

the wildflower patch is comingback for an encore performanceafter last year’s inaugural run right now everything is a verdantvibrant and bloomless array ofweeds and flowers, best I can tell so I hesitate to pull anythingup by the roots because I justmight be pulling up wildflowers from the highways of my youth I remember fields of…

Because Easter is a moveable feast, our twenty-first wedding anniversary falls on Maundy Thursday. So we celebrated tonight. The Playmakers Repertory Company at UNC is doing a production of Big River, a musical telling of the adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The musical was on Broadway in the mid-eighties. The songs were written by the King…

We drove to Hampton, Virginia Sunday after church to surprise our friend Charles who turns fifty tomorrow. We walked into their house around suppertime, ate, and then sat around the table talking as old friends do. Our conversation turned to music and then to the music we grew up on, which is gospel. Thanks to…

This Sunday is one with two faces,from shouts of hosanna to curses,and which emphasis that one placesor whether one reads all the verses that take Jesus from palms to Passionand us from fanfare to forgiveness.We move in liturgical fashionto do all we can to bear witness to a love that will not let us go,even…

I’ve spent the last three days volunteering with the Full Frame Documentary Festival, one of the highlights of the Durham calendar and the largest documentary film festival in the world. I was assigned to the Artist Hospitality Team whose job it was to take the film makers and subjects of the documentaries to and from…

perhaps this could be seenas meeting the minimumrequirement of my promise . . . I far exceeded, however,my quota for laughter,baseball, and my spirit soared like a fly ballin the thin night air . . .forgive me if I am a man of few words Peace,Milton

Marco Werman, the anchor for The World, said, “texted” in a sentence as the past tense of the verb “to text.” Though I’ve come to terms with the transition “text” has made form noun to verb (notice I didn’t say, “transitioned”), I’ve struggled with how to speak of texting in the past tense. It rolls…