I spent the first ten days of April back in Durham, doing some book things, some cookies business, and seeing good friends in a place that feels like home to me. In the process, I haven’t kept my promises to write each day during April. Here is my defense. wordless I know I’ve been silent,…
window the late afternoon light is the color of gratitude wouldn’t you say as the shadows grow longer and the coming chill pulls us closer what else is there but thank you Peace, Milton
question It”s Opening Day . . . (well, the Red Sox start tomorrow) I have moved from coffee shop to brewery trying to catch the metaphor. Is it as simple as the pitcher misses the strike zone, the catcher misses the tag, and I miss my mother, who has been gone half a season and…
I had every intention of using National Poetry Writing Month as an impetus to keep me writing regularly during April, and then I spent the day traveling yesterday and missed Day One. So, I will begin my quest on Day Two. suspended animation I’m sitting at a shared table late on a Saturday morning in…
perspective the daffodils bow their heads in the early morning rain without explanation, on this day after resurrection. I am left to find resonance in both reverence of redemption and the weight of the water. the raindrops hang like tears on the window, or tiny jewels, depending on where I am. my coffee cup is…
Because I have now lived through the death of both of my parents, I understand more of how the disciples might have felt after Jesus’s death and burial. One of the hardest things has been to mark time without them. The first morning. The first month. The first year, and then the second. I think…
I started a new train book on the way to work this morning: Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi. The book, as the title suggests, uses cartography as an extended metaphor for writing. As the train worked its way to New Haven this morning, Turchi was talking about the importance…
My earliest recollections of Communion–or the Lord’s Supper, as we most often called it in Baptist life–was the ritual beginning with the words, “On the night that Jesus was betrayed. . . .” Not on the night he was arrested, or the last night with his disciples, but the night he was betrayed. And the…
under the alleluias I once heard a comedian say the only way to get to the jokes that mattered was to push through the easy stuff, the sophomoric double entendres, the terrible puns, and get past the low-hanging fruit of the obvious and only then can you begin to discover great comedy. I don’t think…
Like most Americans, I suppose, I woke this morning to news of the attacks in Brussels. I’ve only seen a couple of pictures, but I could see it in my mind, as much as I can imagine such a thing. As the day went on, the public conversation went two ways. One was to draw…