Ginger and I are spending the week at the Southwest Baptist Youth Camp, which is a collection of liberal Baptist churches (that’s actually not an oxymoron in their case), and we are getting to meet lots of new faces and see some old and dear friends. I am leading the music and Ginger is doing…
I’ve turned in my grades and have some time before our final faculty meeting, so here are some of my favorite songs of summer. To start us off, the Cars sing a song that always takes me back to youth camp. On to the Sundays singing, “It’s you and it’s me and it’s summertime ….
Do you remember the grade when we built volcanoes —hollow towers of papier-mâché, and the incendiary mixof vinegar and baking powderthat spewed over the sides? It was about the same time our sorrow began to stack up: the strata of struggle and shame solidifying into a debilitating monument whereour fault lines intersect. We watched movies…
One of the many things my wife does well is preach. I look forward to Sundays to hear her offering (no, I don’t get a sneak preview, as a rule) because she listens hard to both God and the world around her before she starts talking. And our world (meaning our personal world) has a…
One of the classes I’m teaching this quarter is a Creative Writing elective. Hardly a day goes by that one of the students declares he or she is unable to write anything because of “writer’s block.” My response is generally one of amusement, since they appear to have plenty of ideas to talk about. And…
Language was opening me up in ways I couldn’t explain and I assumed it was part of the apprenticeship of a poet. (Jimmy Santiago Baca, A Place to Stand) apprenticec.1300, from O.Fr. aprentiz “someone learning” (13c.), from aprendre (Mod.Fr. apprendre ) “to learn, teach,” contracted from L. apprehendere (see apprehend). Aphetic form prentice was long…
When it comes to faith, I started early. I was five years old when I walked down the aisle at Westbury Baptist Church in Houston, Texas and gave my heart to Jesus. I was the oldest son and namesake of a Southern Baptist preacher, the son of two parents who sang me to sleep with…
I’m writing this morning from a hotel in Napier, Illinois, which borders Wheaton, Illinois, home of Wheaton College, which, for the last four years, has been home for my nephew, Scott, who graduated yesterday. As much of the family as could get here gathered to celebrate him and his achievement, as well as making time…
As I remember we sang a lot about tin soldiers even as our friends and brothers drew lots to see who would wade through rice paddies and not come homeor come home dead inside I was thirteen the springof the Kent State shootingstin soldiers and Nixon cominggo ahead and hate your neighborthe image of the…
In my new vocational incarnation, I am reading more, both books I’ve had stacked around for awhile and those I’m reading again with students. My tenth grade class is reading one of my favorite novels, Alan Paton’s Cry, The Beloved Country, which tells the story of Stephen Kumalo’s search for his lost son. Kumalo is…