I know. I haven’t been here in a while. I’ve missed it. And I’m working to change that pattern for the days ahead. I’ll start with my sermon for today. I am preaching in two places this morning: remotely at United Churches of Durham CT and in person at First Congregational Church of Guilford, which…
I’m not sure whether this poem works, but it seemed worth a shot. trustable was the word I heard the syllabic rhythm sent my mind dancing into the past to find uncrustable a made up word for a prepackaged PB&J designed to say the artful care of cutting off crusts takes too much time care…
One of my Facebook friends here in Guilford posted this picture of the sunset blurred by the ash of the fires on the other side of the country. scattered the east coast sunset looks like the west african haze of the harmattan but our sun is not muted by the desert dust but by the…
all is not lost the art of losing isn’t hard to master bishop said and that got her anthologized and awarded but not listened to we have so much more to lose life is losing we all go out empty-handed just this year we lost hugs and handshakes happy hours sacred gatherings live music and…
my letter to you I woke up to an e-mail message informing me of a new Bruce Springsteen record–always good news. The introductory single gave me both the title for my post tonight and a lift in my spirits. ‘neath a crowd of mongrel trees I pulled that bothersome thread got down on my knees…
When I worked at the Roobar restaurant in Plymouth, Massachusetts, I learned how to make a marinara sauce from Tim Miller, the executive chef and one of the best people I ever worked for. I learned a lot of things from him. One summer Saturday after we moved to Durham, North Carolina, I came home…
distance learning the word distance has its roots in discord and disagreement another way of saying something has come between us we stand apart before we masked and measured ourselves the strife simmered under our skins we want to blame the virus but our disease runs deeper long ago we learned to live at extremes…
My friend Nathan Brown is a poet. For a living. And he’s good. At the beginning of the pandemic, he began something called the Fire Pit Sessions on his Facebook page, which grew out of his invitation for people to commission poems about life in these days. He then began to come on every night…
August 3 marks seven years since my father died—on the same day that Gracie, our little goofy Schnauzer, died as well. the third of august the thing I never really liked about august is the way the heat and humidity ride under my skin making it all but impossible to be comfortable I can move…
I preached this week for our church. The passage was Matthew 14:13-24—the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand—which is one of my favorites. Since our sanctuary is not air conditioned, we filmed in Ginger’s office. One of the songs that was popular when I was in high school that has managed to stick…