Dance. If Ginger were writing this blog post tonight with this word in mind, I can guarantee it would have a completely different feel and would involve “Uptown Funk” in some way. What’s really played in the record player of my mind for a couple of days are waltzes, which are, I think, my favorite…
Passageway. I was one of the words that showed up when I crowd-sourced my Lenten Lexicon. Tonight I figured out why. My plans for the evening have been laid out for a week: cook and watch basketball. I’ve been looking forward to it. I was flipping back and forth between the early games when Ginger…
we gathered for dinner on this penultimate thursday because this is the night that we eat dinner together for no other reason than we eat dinner together. fourteen around the table— a couple more than were there the night Jesus broke the bread, poured the wine and spilt his love all over his friends, hoping…
rush hour was a contradiction this afternoon—I could see the stalled cars for what looked like miles in front of me, so I dove for the exit and the open spaces. I saved no time, but I did keep moving, winding down Durham roads I rarely travel; my daily world is small. I would do…
Saturday when I arrived at work I met one of my colleagues who was wearing a t-shirt that said, “Stories Matter.” Naturally, I wanted to know the story behind the shirt. He told me it was for something called the 12×12 Initiative that is a twelve week road trip across country, starting yesterday from Raleigh…
Ordinary. Look it up and you will see the dictionary doesn’t deal with the word too kindly: of no special quality or interest; commonplace; unexceptional; plain or undistinguished; somewhat inferior or below average; mediocre; customary; usual; normal. And yet, I’m happy to report today was an ordinary day—and it was good. According to the same…
One of the people who has mentored me through her writing over many, many years is Madeleine L’Engle, going all the way back to Ms. Reedy at the Lusaka International School reading A Wrinkle in Time to us at the end of the day if we finished our work. One of the sentences that has…
“As we dedicate ourselves to one another, and thus experience daily and directly the diverse array of gifts that contribute to our living, gratitude will take its rightful place as the fundamental disposition that guides and forms our ways.” — P. Travis Kroeker “Communities of care are sustained by rituals of regard.” — bell hooks…
My friend Claudia is an artist and graphic designer here in town. We get together about once a month for lunch. Besides just hanging out and catching up, she brings some sort of drawing and I bring a poem and we swap them with each other. The idea is then she goes home and paints…
I had a day of rest today, thus, today’s word. respite it’s the streetside café that pulls you out of the crush of people filling the sidewalk; it’s the bench in the park where you can sit unnoticed with the disquieting revelation that the world can go on without you, yet expects you will be…