photograph one of the photographs of Jesus I keep in the wallet of my mind is of him looking out over Jerusalem. the sun is burning the last bits of Judean blue out of the Palestinian sky, making room for the night. the long reaches of the last light catch the tears running down his…
The subtitle to David Whyte’s book Consolations gives me a smile most every morning as I turn to my word for the day: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, because the words are anything but everyday it seems to me. (I have to say, parenthetically, that as great as his writing is,…
Spring never comes soon enough in New England or, perhaps I should say, it takes a long time to get here. It teases us in early April, as it did for the last two or three beautiful, crisp, sunlit days, but then come mornings like the one we woke up to that are cold and…
One of the most magnificent failures of my life was as a church planter in Boston. Ginger and I moved to Charlestown, Massachusetts a few months after we married to try and start a church there. We worked hard at it and we had no idea what we were doing. Two or three years in,…
We mark the days of Holy Week as though Jesus was on a schedule that culminated in his execution on Good Friday. We give ourselves one or two things to think about each day and then move on to the next. John wrote that if he had written down everything that happened in Jesus’ life…
Palm Sunday has come and gone without a parade. Here in Guilford we have three churches on the Green: St. George Catholic, Christ Episcopal, and ours–First Church, since in 1643 you had to have a Congregational Church with a settled pastor to constitute as a town in New England. For the Palm Sundays we have…
Over the past week or so, at a friend’s prompting, I have been posting the covers of books that have been significant in my life–just the covers, no explanation. I thought that tonight I would give a preview of tomorrow’s book (Anne Tyler’s Saint Maybe) and a little bit of explanation. empty chair what is…
One of the reasons I know that I am in the “high risk” age group is I am old enough to remember The Lone Ranger television show. Each week, he and Tonto saved somebody from something dangerous and then they would ride off into the sunset leaving someone to ask, “Who was that masked man?”…
April 2 Today has been a day much like any other day. It’s a little hard to keep track. One of the things that makes Thursdays different around here is they are the new Sunday–at least, that is when we do the recording for Sunday’s service. Over the past couple of weeks, I have recorded…
As we flip to a new month, I don’t think I have ever been more aware of the arbitrary nature of the calendar. The date makes no difference. Hell, the day makes no difference. It’s tempting to say it’s like Groundhog Day, except we are not living the same day over and over. Things are…