I spent the morning and early afternoon at the Third Annual Jack Crum Conference on Prophetic Ministry at Avent Ferry United Methodist Church in Raleigh. My primary connection to the event was through my friendship with Ryan Rowe, who is a member of the church and the organizer of this year’s conference. He asked me…
it is a dark and stormy night the sky is angryflashing and bellowingyet refusing to dissolve into tears and weep its wayinto ushering in the dawnour middle schnauzerruns under the bed at the first sound of thunderI’m typing in the darkto better see the light showtrying to beat the deadline imposed by my itchy eyesand…
In the opening lines of Jesus Christ Superstar, Judas sings every time I look at you I don’t understandwhy you let the things you did get so out of handyou’d have managed better if you’d had a planwhy’d you choose such backward time and such a strange landif you’d come today you could have reached…
as I write, Ella, our Schnauzeris stretched out on the bed barking at the sound of our neighbor rollinghis big trash cans out to the curbshe cannot see him, only hear the rumble of the plastic wheelsand she is convinced her sound makes a difference even thoughhe doesn’t stop rolling along and no one inside…
The Fifth of April is an unusual first day of school, but today was just that for my students and me as we began our new chapter and sat down together for our first class in our new building. In each of my three English classes, we were also beginning novels. Here are their opening…
allergies are never mentionedin any of the gospel storiesno one called out to Jesusto ask for sinus reliefeven in the desert’s dust with my head as stuffedas a dorm dirty clothes bagand aware of the gatheringpollen storm I understandthe question – who sinned that this man should be this way? Peace,Milton
John 9 tells the story of a man born blind whom Jesus healed by spreading mud on his face and telling him to and wash. Though Jesus is clear that the man was not the cause of his blindness, I was struck by the unwillingness of others to see him as anything other than blind,…
Tomorrow, April 3, marks the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech to the Memphis sanitation workers in 1968 — his last speech before he was assassinated. After spending the morning talking with some church friends about what it means to be a peacemaker, I offer his words tonight, which read as strikingly current in…
As I drove to work this morning, I heard a story on NPR about advances in 3-D technology that would make it possible to watch without “those ridiculous glasses.” They interviewed an ophthalmologist, Dr. Samuel Marsh, who has pioneered a surgical procedure that alters the eye so glasses are no longer needed to watch TV….
for David Gentiles it’s not the anniversaryof anything other than the second March without you herestill you showed up unexpectedly at a meetingI had with some people to talk about a dream and then again tonight in Nathan’s new bookthough I had a hunch you might be in therebut you snuck up on me when…