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…
Last week I was supposed to drive up to Raleigh, as Andy and Barney used to say, to speak to the Presbyterian Campus Ministries group at North Carolina State University. I was deterred by freezing precipitation, so I went this week instead. The group meets for a meal and a meeting each Wednesday in the…
One of the things I love about my job as a trainer at the computer store is I get to know people. Mine is the one position in the store that sees repeat customers because they have purchased a one-year membership that allows them to come in as often as they can make appointments. Getting…
The woman who wrote the article I talked about yesterday said one of the ways she tried to reach her daughter was to put poems in her shoes because, she said, “What I wanted her to know is: People have been in pain before, struggled to find hope, and look what they’ve done with it.”…
My friend Paul pointed me to an article in the New York Times that has stuck with me for several days now titled “Bringing a Daughter Back From the Brink With Poetry.” The author told a simple story of how she worked to reach out to her teenage daughter as she was going through a…