I started rereading A Passage to India today. One of the people I work with at the Durham restaurant was asking for books to read and I suggested my favorite of E. M. Forster’s novels. When she said she was going to read it, I decided I would go along for the ride. The flyleaf…

In the shadow of the chapel steeplewe’ve simmered and sautéed all evening, following the familiar patterns we know,trying a few new things, marking time bymaking dinners, passing plates, and,finally, taking out the trash. This morning, time was moved alongby turning pages, the clicking of keyboards,and restroom requests; the tools of thetrade are stored in backpacks…

I gave my notice to my chef who hired me for both the Duke and Durham restaurants. Though my exit will be somewhat gradual over the next five or six weeks, I am leaving my job as a professional chef to return to teaching, and specifically teaching English in a small private school made up…

A certain man had two sons. It’s the way Jesus started a lot of the parables, including the one we call the Prodigal Son, which, I might add, is named for the younger sibling. It’s one of those stories I’ve heard so many times I can picture it without even having to think to hard,…

I continued my reading of Nora Gallagher’s Practicing Resurrection and only got about five pages in when I a quote that brought the rest of the day rushing back to me. A spiritual director told me once that God is found on the edge of things, in the margins. About a drunk who sleeps on…

Abel spent the afternoon prepping the vegetable plate: slicing shiitakes and scallions, reducing the risotto, and spreading the mixture onsheet pans to let it cool. Then he enlisted me to make the rice balls and roll them in Japanese breadcrumbs.He cut sweet potatoes, blanched greens, and roasted garlic to make the cream sauce. The thirty-seven…

The whole scene arrived in the middle of a week when the story of the Prodigal Son is the lectionary passage, about as gift wrapped as a sermon illustration could be. Nomar Garciaparra, longtime and well-loved shortstop for the Boston Red Sox who was traded away, came home day before last, to retire. Though the…

I can’t say I have ever heard God speak out loud, but I think I’ve come close. Whatever God’s voice actually sounds like, I think I come close to hearing it when our children lead worship. Last Sunday, they led our call to worship by lining up in front of the Communion table and singing…

In order to survey, Kit said, you always have to have two points. In a photo, he leans over his tripod looking through the scope, high above Otowi Bridge in northern New Mexico, sighting a distant point on the other side of the river . . . I thought of him as making sense of…

I pastored a small rural church while I was in seminary. On more than one occasion, I asked directions to go visit someone in the community I didn’t know and I would be told, “Well, they live in the old Turner place.” Come to find out, the Turners had been gone a good thirty years,…