My father loved the story of Esther. I guess he probably told it to me for the first time when I was six or seven. I don’t know how many times he repeated it just to get to the part where Mordecai says to her, “Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom…
I spent last week in Texas on a work trip that centered around the New Story Festival organized by Gareth Higgins and Brian McLaren that focused on the myth of redemptive violence, which is a term coined by theologian Walter Wink to describe the belief that we can bring order out of chaos through brutal…
march madness when I got to the tiny house I was greeted by Elsa and Lily they are backyard chickens whose tinier house is next to mine they did not invite me in but saw to it that I found my place this morning they were busy as I stepped out to greet my host…
I am fortunate to be driving across Texas just as the bluebonnets are blooming. Here’s where they took me. among the wildflowers the old pickup rolled to a stop on the shoulder of the two-lane road the gravel spoke underneath the worn boots of the workmen who walked to the front of the truck that…
To paraphrase an old commercial, “I don’t play basketball, but I watch it on TV.” Actually, I played on one team when I was in sixth grade. We were on leave from Africa and living in Fort Worth. I was on the Royal Ambassadors team for our church. (If you don’t know what Royal Ambassadors…
the space between our sufferings this is one of those nights when the day has been long and I’m looking for words in a blank book of an evening because I promised I would have something to say I promised to meet you here I have riffled through the pages of my memory hoping a…
someone is always leaving I was twelve years old before I met someone who had never moved and I discovered I was the strange one because I was accustomed to suitcases I was twenty-nine before I had friend for ten years and had stayed close enough to grow our friendship face to face instead of…
I saw an article several months ago that claimed people quit looking for new music after they turn thirty. The study went back to 2015 and talked about neurological reasons we get dug in and cultural ones as well. The article came to mind again as I was thinking about W. S. Merwin’s death and…
I opened my laptop this evening to the news that W. S. Merwin died yesterday. He was a prolific and powerful poet whose words have left their mark on my life. I am going to use this page to share some of those with you. My first introduction to him was “For the Anniversary of…
to mourn is to mark . . . the moment when the world was ripped open, torn asunder and then not to hurry on the palpable absence of those taken—not lost, but stolen— and then wrap our arms around it the seduction of fear that disguises itself as revenge or even righteous indignation that violence…