I have to admit I didn’t know it was a hymn the first time I heard it. I was in tenth grade, living in Fort Worth, Texas during our year of leave from the mission field (as they used to say) and completely taken with American popular radio. It was the year of “American Pie”…
Through all of our years in Massachusetts, we had more than one Easter that left the children hunting for eggs in the snow. North Carolina offers warmer climes, but snow of a different sort: we’ve been knee deep in pollen. And I’ve sneezed and sorted and snuffled all week long. In my mind’s yellow haze…
we stood in the columbariumwell after sunriseto speak of resurrectionwith the names of thosewho share death in commonas our backdropthe whistle of treesour soundtrack andthe promise of pancakeswaiting for us inside as we retold the story I heardthe passive verb:the stone was rolled awayas though coming backto life were as easy assliding a door to…
On one of their early albums, Simon and Garfunkel sang “Silent Night” while a recording of the Seven O’Clock News played at the same time. (You can hear it here.) The song began playing in my head as I sat down to write, I think, because of the way my day went. My Holy Saturday…
“It is finished,” you said. When we finally get to ask questions you will be answer,mine will be, “What did you mean?” I’ve taken my shotat explanations;the words mattertoo much to let themjust hang there. Yet even when I look back from Sunday,full of resurrectionneither life nor deathwill be done. I dug in the dirt…
Several years ago, Ginger and I went to Las Vegas because we had never been. We were already in California for a gathering with my side of the family and we tacked on a couple of days and drove from San Diego to Vegas, staying – of course – at the Hard Rock Hotel. On…
I trained my replacement tonight. The guy who will take over at the Duke restaurant next semester worked alongside Abel and me to get a sense of how things work and, I’m sure, how he might do things differently once I have shuffled off to high school. He’s a really nice guy, a strong cook,…
As I drove to the Duke restaurant this afternoon, Talk of the Nation was my soundtrack, as is often the case. I happened to join the program just as Tavis Smiley began talking about his program MLK: A Call Beyond Conscience, which looks at Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break…
One of my friends from the Durham restaurant, Leonora, told me about a poetry class she has been taking at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies. The class itself doesn’t have much to do with making documentaries, which I suppose means more than anything that the folks at the CDS are mostly looking for new…
We started on the courtyardall waving our palm frondsand naming them since we neversay frond except on Palm Sunday. Before the hour was overwe moved from parade toPassion, from courtyard to Cross, in a couple of verses. Tonight I watched basketballand saw how quickly thingschange, how triumph crossesthat thin line into loss. For years, I’ve…