By the time most of you read this (actually, by the time I finish writing), it will be April, whose first week holds a sort of harmonic convergence for me. The First of April marks the beginning of National Poetry Month (National GeekFest, as Ginger lovingly calls it); this weekend brings the NCAA Basketball Tournaments…

I would like to sayat the end of the daythat I still had some playbut that would be (somewhat) lying I would like to revealall the things that I feelyou know – keeping it realbut that would be (mostly) sighing So I’m going to bedwith much left unsaidand though that rhymes with deadI intend to…

My friend Gordon has been telling the story of his church in San Antonio at his blog at at the High Calling website. Part of the story is about the pastor who preceded him — a friend of many of us – who was amazingly gifted at offering grace to others that he was not…

can it be on these nightswhen we are tucked in our homecurled up on the couch withdoughnuts of dogs at our feet,the kitchen still holding the aromaof the garlic I roasted this afternoonthe way we are holding life close,with only a couple of lights burning even the clouds have closed us instill – beyond them…

I finished Kathleen Flinn’s The Sharper the Knife, The Less You Cry today and found myself moved by her closing words: As in cooking, life requires that you taste, taste, taste as you go along – you can’t wait until the dish of life is done. In my career, I always looked ahead to the…

I had a few moments to check my blog reader before heading to work and found two quotes from two very different people, Beth and Maggi, both quoting others. I read them in this order. First: Everybody wants to be a rock star, but no one wants to learn the chords. and then: Seeing the…

When we opened the restaurant at Duke last fall, we averaged about thirty customers a night; fifty was busy. Over the course of the semester, the number grew to where fifty was the average. This semester, we’ve seen our customer base expand to where sixty-five is a slow night. Tonight we served ninety and topped…

Last fall, when we were just getting the restaurant at Duke going, serving fifty people felt like a busy night. We wanted to be busier than that, but when we were averaging about thirty-five, fifty felt like a lot. Last Wednesday night, we served one hundred and eight people in a little over one hundred…

I was catching up on my Writer’s Almanac tonight and found yesterday was the shared birthday of Billy Collins and Edith Grossman. Billy Collins was the US Poet Laureate from 2001-2003 and holds the distinction of being a poet who actually sells books. Edith Grossman is a book translator, known best for her translations of…

We had been with Julia and Larry for a couple of hours Friday evening before the conversation turned to snakes, mostly because both Ginger and Larry were going to preach about them following the lectionary passage from John 3 where Jesus said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness . . .” “Everybody…