We blow out candles at our church during Lent. It’s a tradition I’ve not seen anywhere else. One of the members of the church who is an excellent woodworker created a cross that lays at about a forty-five degree angle and has enough holes to represent each of the Sundays in the Lenten season. Each…
Saturday is the hardest day to write. Friday morning I can get up and get going before I have to go to the restaurant where I work ten to ten. My schedule is the same on Saturday, but it’s also the middle day. Sundays are full as well at my other job: two services in…
This is one of those mornings where I have to write like the wind. Yesterday was errand day: grocery shopping, filling up the car with gas, filling my Celexa prescription, and finding a birthday present for our friend Todd – which means a trip to Borders. I took Parker Palmer with me as I planned…
I woke up this morning thinking about how the circumstances of life alter our fields of vision. I got a packet of information in the mail from Global Exchange yesterday. They are a wonderful organization deeply committed to social justice on many fronts and have been one of the primary sources of information for me…
My nephew, Ben, turns twenty today. On the wall next to the staircase in our house is our “Wall of Fame,” filled with pictures of friends and family, each photograph holding a different story. One of my favorites is now about ten years old. Ben, his brother Tim (sometimes called Scott), and I are all…
I started my morning, as I often do, listening to The Writer’s Almanac by Garrrison Keillor. Though it plays on WGBH, one of our local NPR stations, I listen to it from the website because I can do that on my own schedule. Along with a poem, Keillor gives a quick rundown of some of…
Packing up the youth group to go skiing is easier here in New England than it was in Texas. For one thing, Maine is a hell of a lot closer to Marshfield than Colorado was to Fort Worth; for another, the vans come equipped with DVD players these days. We weren’t even through the city…
Sunday night is fading fast and I have promises to keep. I got home from the ski trip a few hours ago and have spent a good deal of time making sure Ginger, Gracie, and Lola all know how much I missed them. The ski trip was a great time. We took fourteen kids and…
What makes a day significant? Yesterday was John Irving’s birthday, Texas Independence Day, and my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. It was also the day my mother traveled to MD Anderson Hospital for her check-up to hear she is cancer free and discharged back to her primary doctor for future follow up. Yesterday was also the…
Last Saturday, while I was slicing mushrooms (which is a daily preparatory task at the restaurant), I clipped the end of the index finger on my left hand, just to the right of the fingernail. I was trying to work too fast and not paying attention to the moment. The cut was not severe, just…