• finding ourselves

    My students are embarking on an annual journey at our school we call the Academic Exposition, or Expo, which is a big research paper and presentation. We take a day at school for everyone to show their stuff and all the parents come to see what their children have learned. It is an arduous journey…

  • sunday sonnet #20

    This morning, in preparation for our church’s participation in the Durham CROP Walk (feel free to make a donation here), we watched a short film from Church World Service about women in Kenya who spent eleven hours of everyday walking to find water until CWS was able to help them build a sand dam which…

  • sonnet #19

    The lectionary is still camped out in the Sermon on the Mount. Today’s passage was Matthew 6:24-34, best known for Jesus saying we cannot serve two masters and that the lilies of the field know how to trust better than we do. Ginger and I had good discussions about how we were to read the…

  • declaration of . . .

    we may hold these truthsto be self-evidentlife, liberty, andthe pursuitof happiness howevereven truths have their limitswhen we wrote those wordswe were young and isolatedand thinking mostlyof ourselvesnow, we are olderand establishedand powerful and somethinghas been lostin the translationof your criesfor freedom:our gas prices are going upalong with ourfear and anxietywe know you have sufferedbut the…

  • february

    I am still unaccustomed to the spring sun shining down in February after so many years of snow on snow,nor have I grown to graspwhat is already growingin our yard: gentle shootsof promise, tree buds oftenacity, but I do know enough to dig and clear,to rake and remulch,to prune and prepare . . .and then…

  • sunday sonnet #18

    I preached this morning, using part of the same passage Ginger preached from last week. (The sermon is in the previous post.) A sermon and a sonnet in the same day is hard work. We read the same passage in church todayas last week — about loving enemies and turning cheeks when violence aims our…

  • what love looks like

    “What Love Looks Like”Matthew 5:38-48A Sermon for Pilgrim United Church of Christby Milton Brasher-CunninghamFebruary 20, 2011 In these weeks leading up to Lent, we have been traveling through the Sermon on the Mount, as it has been called down through Christian history. Early in Jesus’ ministry, it seems, he stood in front of a large…

  • allergies

    “Where do allergies go when it’s after the show and they want to find something to eat?” — Paul Simon, “Allergies” allergies as best I understandthe reason my eyesare red and puffyand my nose stuffyis my body is tryingto protect me frombad things in the aira knee-jerk responseshutting down myair ways and blurringmy vision as…