Growing up Southern Baptist meant growing up with an image of a Very Male God. Whatever images of God were given to me, one thing was always clear: God was He. Of course, Southern Baptists by no means had a monopoly on the pronoun, but the universe of faith I grew up in had no…
One of my favorite images from scripture is that of God coming to walk through the garden each evening with Adam and Eve. There’s something about time being kept only by the rhythm of our steps that makes walking a sacred activity. Ginger and I walked our usual loop around the neighborhood yesterday afternoon, ending…
The food we use at the restaurant comes from several different sources, most of which are local. Our oysters and mussels come right out of Cape Cod Bay. Our pasta provider makes it all just a few miles from us. Our produce company, though local, picks up the fruit and vegetables from the market in…
If you want to sell your house, they say,make it look like you don’t live there.People can’t imagine themselves livingin the space if you are still present.I don’t know how to disappear, I say.I can’t erase myself as I leave every day.How can I leave this house to someonewithout imagination enough to see it?Just three…
Sometimes, our lives are like a joke, or at least the opening of one. Yesterday, Ginger and I performed a wedding together that included a Buddhist, a Catholic, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Jew, and a lapsed Presbyterian. She looked at the gathered crowd of friends and family and said, “It sounds like we should…
Yesterday I sang at the funeral of a man I had never met and I cried. He sounded like a great guy – someone I would have liked and would have shared a great deal in common. His family loved him. The line that killed me was his son-in-law saying, “I’m so grateful that my…
I’m not one of those people who remember dreams, for the most part. Something about the way I wake up in the morning makes my mind work like an Etch-a-Sketch, erasing whatever was created during the night as I shake myself into consciousness. But I think I had a dream last night that refused to…
Yesterday was Ginger’s last Sunday of vacation, so I spent the morning, once more, reading Sara Miles. The heart of her book is about starting a food pantry at her church in San Francisco. In the process of telling her story, she says some profound and confrontive things about faith and action. As a grateful…
Ginger and I have spent the last two days finishing all the things we’ve lived with unfinished for the last six years so our house could go on the market today. As we were leaving our realtor at the house, a couple was coming in to try and imagine themselves in the space we have…
This poem is a response to two prompts: one from Christine with this accompanying image and the other being the final prompt at Poetry Thursday, which was “open window.” They reminded me of jazz artist Chet Baker, whose story I first learned of through David Wilcox’s song, “Chet Baker’s Unsung Swan Song.” open window The…