I can tell by watching the clip that it happened a long time ago–1996 to be exact–but I saw it for the first time this week: Patti LaBelle singing “This Christmas” at the National Christmas Tree Lighting and getting to the part where the background singers are supposed to sing, “This Christmas,” but nobody sings….
sundowning some twenty winters ago I learned to leave the house before sundown so I do not go down with it outside the darkness feels expansive the house feels like a tomb the darkness is not the problem my depression pulls the house down wait–say that again the darkness is not the problem my depression…
On this last day of November, the only leaves on the trees belong to the evergreens. A post about what I learned from the autumn leaves is woefully late, especially in a culture that puts out Halloween calendar in mid-August, but such is the nature of my life in these days. One of those who…
Stephen Sondheim died last week. He had Thanksgiving dinner with friends and died on Friday, unexpectedly it seems. Looking back through my texts, I heard about his death around six on Friday, because that is when I wrote a friend with whom I share a love of Sondheim and his songs. I was in the…
I began serving as the bridge interim pastor at Westbrook Congregational Church UCC in Westbrook, Connecticut this morning. I will be there until the Sunday after Easter while they complete their search for a settled pastor. My post to begin my Advent Journal for this year is the manuscript of my sermon. It is specific…
I am preaching this morning at our church in Guilford. The passage for today is Mark 13:1-8. One of the memories that has stayed with me from my preaching class in seminary is one of a student questioning our professor about how to be original. A knowing smile came across the professor’s face and he…
Today marks five weeks since my knee replacement surgery. Since that time I have been more singularly focused than almost any time in recent memory. The last five weeks have consisted of doing my exercises, eating, and resting–though not always sleeping. I came home from the hospital the day after my surgery and spent the…
I started playing with words others have written that have become inscribed on my life for one reason or another. It was a nice distraction as I prepare for my surgery on Wednesday and turned out to be fun as well. index of first lines I pulled into Nazareth was feeling ‘bout half past dead…
We have had the kind of weekend that makes me glad I live in New England: cool mornings, highs in the seventies, low humidity, and the long, warm, late-afternoon light that lets you know the days won’t be this way for long. Our little town put on a Performing Arts Festival that gave us good…
tiny waltz and somehow a day worth bottling has slipped into night without leaving words to describe how it felt and I have spent far too long staring at a screen as though the sheer silence of sitting would shape my sentences and I have deleted far more than I have saved but that’s true…