Many years ago, Ginger asked me to write a story for Christmas Eve. I wrote something called “A Faraway Christmas,” which has made an appearance on this blog a number of times. Last year, when I was the bridge pastor for United Churches of Durham, Connecticut and we couldn’t meet in person, I recorded an…
alleluia advent this year feels more like a season of endurance than expectation as though ‘we made it’ might be a legitimate translation of alleluia in these days of distance the road to the manger seems in desperate need of repair who could believe that Christ could be born on a night like this the…
Over a decade ago–August 2009, to be exact–I sat down to write my post for the day and began this way: Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon today, I found what I thought would be the opening lines to a poem for my post: when they ask how you’re doing say something other than…
I think I was working on my Masters in English when I first learned of bell hooks, noticing first that she chose not to use capital letters in her name. The English department at UMass Boston was full of professors who were intent on introducing us to people who changed the way we thought about…
time piece The Long Island Sound faces south so even though I’m on the East Coast I can see sunrise and sunset over the water today they were only nine hours apart that’s all the daylight we got come back six months from now and that stretches to fifteen hours the days in between rocking…
When I last posted on December 8, it was not my intent to wait eleven days before I wrote again. The last couple of weeks have been a symphony of emotions from my sixty-fifth birthday to a health scare for one of our chosen family. I tried to get here, but it seems like I…
this particular tuesday it snowed all day but nothing stuck is a good description of this particular tuesday afternoon or so I thought until I realized it was wednesday and as I turned to make my way back home I wondered why fogelberg could sing about the snow turning into rain and make it worthy…
One of the things I often find is when I become aware of something I begin to notice it everywhere, which leaves me wondering if I see it everywhere because I’m looking for it or if I am just slow to the switch when it comes to catching on to stuff. The last couple of…
I have offered music posts most every Advent that I have been writing, so I thought I would keep up the tradition here in the middle of the season. These are not Christmas songs, or specifically Advent songs, but they are songs that speak to me in these days, songs that offer cold comfort. Most…
For about twenty-five Advent seasons, I opened the services at our church (whichever church that was) with “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord” from Godspell. That tradition didn’t make the move to Guilford, but the song is tattooed on my heart. The scripture passage for my sermon today alludes to Isaiah’s words, and it…