We got our Christmas tree up today, along with the candles in the windows in good New England fashion. And it’s halfway through Advent. As I was working on things this afternoon, I listened to my friend Billy Crockett’s song “Coasting Into Christmas” and found a helpful and hopeful resonance, which led me to think…
I finished a book and started a book today. It was a good day. The first was Bandersnatch: An Invitation to Explore Your Unconventional Soul by Erika Morrison, which I began reading before we left Durham, packed it by accident, and just got back to it this week. By redefining four words—avant-garde, alchemy, anthropology, and art—she…
When the worst of my depression hit in the fall of 2001, I quit reading the newspaper. For years my morning ritual was to go from front to back, soaking up as much as I could. As I worked to learn how to live through the darkness visible, one piece of advice I found was…
At our church here in Guilford, Ginger is one of two pastors who share the responsibility of ministering to our congregation, and part of what that means is they alternate preaching from week to week. Today it was Sarah’s turn. The introduction of her sermon reminded me of what the conductor had said at the…
The day has been long, not because of anything other than the passing of time, I suppose. I worked at the computer store and came home tired. I have searched for words for a couple of hours now and found them already written by others. I offer three poems that spoke to me tonight, all…
There times in our new town of Guilford feels as though I live in a postcard or a movie set. The town is quaint and beautiful and steeped in its traditions. Like many places across the country, we had our Tree Lighting tonight, but ours was on the Town Green, bordered by shops and offices…
One of the things that helped me today was a blog post by a woman named Katherine that made the rounds on a couple of Facebook feeds that I follow offering ways to respond to the mess of a world we live in these days. Here are some of the suggestions that stuck out to…
Perspective I feel small in the face of overwhelming violence: another killing, another killing, another killing . . . it’s as hard to be hopeful as it is to be poetic. How can our kindness afford to be random when the violence is intentional? This can’t be the last word. Peace, Milton
Perhaps it was the mention of constellations in the quote from Sarah Lewis last night, and the mention of W. S, Merwin’s poem that got me thinking about the dark, which features prominently in both. Perhaps it was a friend who wrote, “I have been to the heart of darkness and found it groundless.” Whatever…
One of the things the move from Durham to Guilford precipitated is my transferring from the computer store there to the one in New Haven. With the transfer also came a change in role because the position I held in Durham was not open here, which also meant a couple of weeks of training to…