I noticed tonight, as we were singing carols in our Christmas Eve service, that our hymnal has five verses to “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” my favorite carol. I find deep comfort in what I have known as the third verse, which I know has been quoted more than once here: and you beneath…

If you want to be in power,you have to have money;if you want to be invited,you have to be somebody;if you want to be in charge,you had better be rich;if you want to be noticed,you’d better know somebody.That’s the way of this world:this tiny planet, tucked awayin a fold of the universe,not the best or…

And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. (Luke 2:6 KJV) I first learned the story the same wayLinus told it: in language so oldthat some of the words had been lostor forgotten, others changed. No one says, “the days were accomplished”anymore, unless you’re Linus…

I managed to avoid the mall this season until today. I had to go because that’s where the stuff I needed was being kept (Ginger and Jay were going, too), so, as long as we were going, we decided at least part of the afternoon should be spent at the movies; we saw Invictus. Put…

It’s late, the dinner shift was busy, and I am missing my friend David. I’ve turned to music we shared together, particularly Mark Heard and Pierce Pettis. One of Pierce’s songs, “I’ve Got a Hope,” keeps circling around. I tried to find it on YouTube to no avail, but here is the lyric. It comes…

Last night our little town of Durham lay in the path of a winter storm working it’s way up the East Coast and we got enough snow to make it feel real. Once the ground was covered, I walked out into the street to take a picture of our house with lights aglow. Because the…

I wrote last night about a friend in ICU. Tonight I write to say my friend, David Gentiles, died earlier this evening with his daughters gathered around him. I’ve been staring at the computer screen for a couple of hours looking for words and have come up empty. My friend is gone: my heart hurts,…

I have spent the last couple of days waiting for news about an old friend who was severely injured and is in ICU; beyond that, the details are not mine to share. Our friendship goes back about twenty-five years, I think; it seems tonight that we have always known each other. My sadness has let…

If someone were driving by our church tonight, they might have mistaken us for Baptists: the parking lot was full on a Wednesday night. The choir was rehearsing, with orchestra, for their Vivaldi offering on Sunday, the bilingual English class was having their Christmas party in the Fellowship Hall, and a group of us were…

After a week with my in-laws, a week where I didn’t have to work and had time to cook dinner in the evenings, I’ve had two days of double shifts split between lunch at the Duke restaurants (making soups, mostly) and evening catering jobs, one on a grand scale (520 people) and the other, a…