I love learning new words, so today was a good day. I began reading If You Should Fail: Why Success Eludes Us and Why It Doesn’t Matter by Joe Moran, who is one of my favorite writers. He also authored my favorite book on writing, First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing…
For thirty years or so I have written every day during Advent (or tried to) as a way of focusing my heart and mind on the season. For the last fifteen or sixteen years, those musings have found their place here on the blog. This year marks my first Advent with the good people at…
I know. The picture with this post makes it looks as though it is going to include a recipe, but it is a story about a recipe. If you want the recipe, give me a call. When you read the sermon, you’ll understand. ______________________________ One the times I miss my mother most is when I…
Years ago, my mother sent me a recipe that I have since seen named “cry babies” or “candied jalapeños”–basically it involved adding crushed pineapple and sugar to a jar of pickled jalapeños and cooking them till they were happy together. It’s a good recipe. I’ve made it many times. A few years later, I wondered…
I know the world is covered up in recipe posts, but this is one of our holiday favorites. Like most of my Thanksgiving recipes, this is one I learned from my mother. Unlike most of the recipes I learned from her, this is one I bake pretty much the way she taught me. I make…
I veered away from the lectionary passage this week to talk about gratitude. My text was the story of Jesus healing the ten who had leprosy, yet only one returned to say thanks. The point of the story runs deeper than saying we all should write thank you notes. _________________________ We live in a world…
The other name for Thanksgiving at our house is Pie-a-pa-looza. I love baking pies and sharing them. Starting Saturday or Sunday I’ll begin making crusts and then filling and baking them on Monday and Tuesday, before I am called to Thanksgiving Dinner duty, and then Ginger and I “Preacher’s Wife it,” as she likes to…
The lectionary passage for this past Sunday was Matthew 25:1-13, which is one of Jesus’ more enigmatic parables, but, hey, I was up for the challenge—and my preparation took me in some interesting directions, which I think is what the parables were intended to do. Anyway, here’s the sermon . . . _________________________ “All the…
I have had the privilege of spending a few days doing nothing but practicing friendship with a group of men who care deeply for one another. This poem grew out of the observations of one of them as we sat on the porch together after dinner last night. in a clearing the room held silence…
Because I am going to be in Houston on All Saints Sunday, we celebrated a week early at my church. (Here’s hoping the Liturgical Police don’t catch wind of it.) The sermon includes a reference to a cookie recipe that I was commissioned to create which you can find here, and a poem that I…