I preached about joy this week, which helped me as we get closer to the solstice and the daylight drips down to its shortest appearance. Joy is easier to recognize or feel than it is to preach about, but I gave it a good shot. _________________________ I amused myself as I worked on the sermon…
A little whimsy for a December evening . . . marshmallow farm here’s the thing many of us live near marshmallow farms without knowing they are rarities events rather than ongoing projects farms of fancy marshmallows mature stealthily hidden in fields of hay and are flash harvested to find them whole before they are cut…
My birthday gift this year was Burt Burleson, my most enduring friend whom I have known for almost fifty years. As a third-culture kid who moved around most of my life, I lost track of those I knew in my childhood and adolescence. Burt and I met in the fall of 1976. I can remember…
The emphasis for the second Sunday of Advent is peace, or in our version, just peace—not in the sense of only peace but of peace informed by justice. The scripture passage was from Mark 1 and described the appearance of John the Baptist. As I said in the sermon, talking about peace feels even more…
A quick note: I am playing a bit of catch up with my Advent Journal because I picked up some malware that was sending people spam messages when they tried to get to the site. That is all corrected now, thanks to the good folks at Dreamhost, but it has kept my quiet for a…
nourishment over lunch I looked back at my marginalia from my morning’s reading we must align our functioning with those we depend on for life to be sustainable weighty words for one sitting at the bar at doody’s waiting on a wedge salad when I gave my order as she filled my water glass the…
I love learning new words, so today was a good day. I began reading If You Should Fail: Why Success Eludes Us and Why It Doesn’t Matter by Joe Moran, who is one of my favorite writers. He also authored my favorite book on writing, First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing…
For thirty years or so I have written every day during Advent (or tried to) as a way of focusing my heart and mind on the season. For the last fifteen or sixteen years, those musings have found their place here on the blog. This year marks my first Advent with the good people at…
I know. The picture with this post makes it looks as though it is going to include a recipe, but it is a story about a recipe. If you want the recipe, give me a call. When you read the sermon, you’ll understand. ______________________________ One the times I miss my mother most is when I…
Years ago, my mother sent me a recipe that I have since seen named “cry babies” or “candied jalapeños”–basically it involved adding crushed pineapple and sugar to a jar of pickled jalapeños and cooking them till they were happy together. It’s a good recipe. I’ve made it many times. A few years later, I wondered…