someone is always leaving I was twelve years old before I met someone who had never moved and I discovered I was the strange one because I was accustomed to suitcases I was twenty-nine before I had friend for ten years and had stayed close enough to grow our friendship face to face instead of…
I saw an article several months ago that claimed people quit looking for new music after they turn thirty. The study went back to 2015 and talked about neurological reasons we get dug in and cultural ones as well. The article came to mind again as I was thinking about W. S. Merwin’s death and…
I opened my laptop this evening to the news that W. S. Merwin died yesterday. He was a prolific and powerful poet whose words have left their mark on my life. I am going to use this page to share some of those with you. My first introduction to him was “For the Anniversary of…
to mourn is to mark . . . the moment when the world was ripped open, torn asunder and then not to hurry on the palpable absence of those taken—not lost, but stolen— and then wrap our arms around it the seduction of fear that disguises itself as revenge or even righteous indignation that violence…
evensong these are the days when dusk feels indecisive, reluctant to bring the day to an end yet holding on for a few minutes more each evening, as though trying to make room for just one more thing. I love the long reach of the light, the fading fire that fills the horizon but I…
I led a Bible study Monday night at church looking at Mark 8 and the things that happened leading up to Jesus saying: After calling the crowd together with his disciples, Jesus said to them, “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. All…
As we finish up our first week of Lent, it seems a good time to offer some songs for the road. I’ve chosen songs that have come alive to me for one reason or another over the past months. Gillian Welch’s “One Little Song” seems a good place to start. gotta be a song left…
I have a growing collection of phrases that I have come across reading. I started writing them down just to see what they might become. One of them became the title of the poem below, though I’m not sure this is an ice cream shop I’d enjoy. the flavor of fear social anxiety a la…
This morning before church I read more of Seven Thousand Ways of Listening by Mark Nepo. He talked about how being on a snowy road one night sent him into a memory about his father. Nepo said, “When I returned to the snowy road, I wasn’t sure which road I was on.” Reflection on his…
spring forward it is a childish act of communal arrogance to think we can change what time it is simply by agreeing to do so the sun will be nonplussed in its rising and setting, no stars will be dismayed the moon will not be late we have given our folly a name that smacks…