One of the informal rituals of our marriage is Ginger asking me, usually apropos of nothing, “Give me three reasons why you love me.” And I do. I have a long list; this is not a difficult challenge. Sometimes, she rephrases the question: “Why did you want to marry me?” Again, easy answer, which is…
Ash Wednesday showed up early for me this year because I was given the chance, thanks to my friends Lori and Terry, to hear Garrison Keillor tell stories. Though I have listened to him on the radio for thirty years, I’ve never heard him live. Monday, he showed up unadorned, without any of his Prairie…
This poem is in response to Random Acts of Poetry over at The High Calling. word play I love the way words yearn for one another:the way they join handslike children on the playground,the way they laugh at each otherclimb up the slideand then crash into the leaves; the way they spoon togetherlike loversin the…
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…
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…
The Durham Bulls put out an open call for anyone who wanted to audition to sing the National Anthem to show up at the ball park last Saturday and take their best shot. I got there about thirty minutes before auditions were to begin, only to find I was sixty-eighth in line. Fortuitously, Number Sixty-Seven…
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…
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…
Whether it’s Gadhafi or Guantanamo, torture is wrong. Thanks to Amy Laura Hall to organizing an event that gets us talking about it out loud. Come to Durham and join the conversation, please. Peace,Milton
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…