Because I have now lived through the death of both of my parents, I understand more of how the disciples might have felt after Jesus’s death and burial. One of the hardest things has been to mark time without them. The first morning. The first month. The first year, and then the second. I think…
I started a new train book on the way to work this morning: Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi. The book, as the title suggests, uses cartography as an extended metaphor for writing. As the train worked its way to New Haven this morning, Turchi was talking about the importance…
My earliest recollections of Communion–or the Lord’s Supper, as we most often called it in Baptist life–was the ritual beginning with the words, “On the night that Jesus was betrayed. . . .” Not on the night he was arrested, or the last night with his disciples, but the night he was betrayed. And the…
under the alleluias I once heard a comedian say the only way to get to the jokes that mattered was to push through the easy stuff, the sophomoric double entendres, the terrible puns, and get past the low-hanging fruit of the obvious and only then can you begin to discover great comedy. I don’t think…
Like most Americans, I suppose, I woke this morning to news of the attacks in Brussels. I’ve only seen a couple of pictures, but I could see it in my mind, as much as I can imagine such a thing. As the day went on, the public conversation went two ways. One was to draw…
Anger has never come easy for me. My father grew up in an angry household, for reasons that would take several posts to explain. His take away from those days was to decide the family he helped to create would not live that way. He didn’t yell or lose his temper, and neither did my…
I sang in church this morning. One of the folks I have met since moving to Guilford is a guy named Geoff and he and I sang “The Touch of the Master’s Hand” in worship. Most people know the song because of Wayne Watson, but I had the privilege of learning it while I was…
the road from here to resurrection is mapped in my mind (and my heart), from palms to parables, crowds to cross. I know the days, the steps, the words, the mileposts. my feet are covered with the dust from the feet of disciples who walked this way when the road was not so well marked…
here in america we yell at each other as though anger were a pre-existing condition, and diatribe an anagram of democracy; but screaming doesn’t make it so: louder and truer are not synonyms— the same goes for rich and smart. the word becomes flesh the light shines in the darkness and the shouting cannot put…
keepsake there are some nights when the sky turns the color of friendship and fades into the crisp darkness of gratitude friends old and new around our table shared food and stories love and laughter as though there was enough for all we’ve washed the dishes saved the leftovers and turned out the lights except…