I’ve worked two days at the Inn since I decided to go back and have quickly realized the two weeks away lessened my capacity to work ten and eleven hour shifts. In short, I’ve come home tired, which is one of the reasons I didn’t write last night. My fortnight of forced freedom also brought…

One of the things I’ve learned in a little over a year of blogging is how short the life expectancy of a post really is. Once it moves far enough down the page that people have to scroll to find it, it is truly an archive. So, when I woke up this morning to find…

For a mostly white congregation in the suburbs, we do a pretty good job celebrating Martin Luther King Day. It starts with a breakfast (we had fifty people this year) where we hear excerpts from King’s speeches and writings, and then a worship centered around issues of peace and social justice. Paul Nickerson, the Associate…

Several years ago, I was singing for a church banquet and came to the point in my set where I was going to sing “Angel From Montgomery,” my favorite song. I prefaced the song very simply — “I relate to this song more than any song I know” — then I started to sing: I…

This morning on the TODAY show, they told of an American Airlines flight from hell over New Year’s Weekend. The flight was supposed to go from San Francisco to Dallas: three and a half hours. Because of severe storms in Dallas, the flight was rerouted to Austin, where it was told to land and wait…

Something in the day lead me to a poem rather than an essay. I’m less confident in my poetry, but it is what I have to offer. Alternate TuningI’m confused.I don’t understand.I’ve played guitar a long time.But tonight, I’m trying something new.I press the string against the neck for aG, but the note that sounds…

God called again, “Samuel!”—the third time! Yet again Samuel got up and went to Eli, “Yes? I heard you call me. Here I am.” That’s when it dawned on Eli that God was calling the boy. So Eli directed Samuel, “Go back and lie down. If the voice calls again, say, ‘Speak, God. I’m your…

Naomi Shihab Nye is one of my favorite poets and one of my heroes because of the way she wages peace with words. When I found a book of her poetry I did not have, You & Yours, I whipped out one of my Christmas gift cards and gave it to myself. This was the…

I opened one of my Christmas presents yesterday. My friend, Lance, gave me a gift certificate to Calabash Music, a global music web site unlike anything I’ve ever seen (or heard). Here’s how they describe themselves: Calabash Music™ is the ultimate global music destination giving easy access to all the great, but hard-to-find, music from…

There’s the theology you discuss late at night over coffee or beers and then there’s the theology that gets lived out. The challenge, for me, is for the two to be quite similar. In coming to terms with my job situation, I turned to Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount: Therefore I tell…