I’m not a mathematician. I know enough to explain what pi is, but that’s about it. I didn’t even make it to the end of the book The Life of Pi. As I said yesterday, Pi Day is Pi(e) Day: an excuse to make and eat pie and invite people over to eat with us….
I have spent the day preparing for tomorrow. Two years ago it struck me that March fourteenth—3/14—was as good an excuse as any for an all pie dinner, so we had our inaugural Pi(e) Day. Now pie holds an important place in our home, particularly at Thanksgiving, or—as we like to call it—Pie-a-palooza. Some years…
Shame. Since the first day I asked for suggestions for my Lenten Lexicon, I have stopped at this one and wondered what to say. Shame. As a noun, its something we feel: humiliation, dishonor. As a verb, it can be something we inflict on someone else: we shame them. Maybe that’s why the word came…
To say my father was a sports fan is like saying I like to cook. The man would pull over and watch five year olds play football just because it was a game. He became the Sports Chaplain at Baylor because he loved going to the games. I’ve thought a great deal about him today…
Coming and going from work today I heard stories about the SAE chapter—or, I should say, former SAE chapter—at OU being disbanded because of a video that surfaced showing the members chanting a song that used the n-word and talked about lynching. I have chosen not to watch the video and take the word of…
I had some time to read on my lunch hour today, so bell hooks was once again my companion. The essays in her book, belonging: a culture of place, have been challenging, encouraging, and disquieting because she is not willing to be comfortable or individualistic. Today’s essay centered on the distinction between traveling and journeying….
Today was Youth and Children’s Sunday at our church, which meant the children were our worship leaders. One of them, who reads quite regularly in worship, stood up to lead us in our call to worship. Leader: We have seen the light of God People: on high mountains of celebration and in the laughter of…
Perseverance: steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. I woke up this morning thinking about the anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery that took place fifty years ago today. As I imagined what it must have been like to be there that day, and I contemplated once more the…
Plight. I woke up with the word on my mind this morning. It was one of the early submissions when I asked people to give me words for my Lenten journal and it has pulled at me all along the way. I know the word primarily as a noun, as in “we should do something…
This week has been a grey one for me—one in which I have brushed up against my depression. Some of it is weather related, but that’s too easy an attribution. Some of it is grief. Monday marked what would have been my parents’ fifty-ninth wedding anniversary; Tuesday marked nineteen months since Dad died. Some of…