threat landscape who knows what’s out there hiding in the hills or in a handshake I could get hit by a bus or a brick or the morning news hard enough to knock me flat on my back what happens next is just waiting until I drop my guard or my keys I don’t know…
Here are some of the songs that speak to my heart in these days. I offer them to you as traveling companions. As a part of our Ash Wednesday service, I sang Emmylou Harris’ “Prayer in Open D” (which, parenthetically, makes me think someone needs to do an Emmyloucharist, much as they did a U2charist)….
Congress passed a bill yesterday making lynching a hate crime–a hundred and fifty years late. As the bill states, “At least 4,742 people, predominantly African Americans, were reported lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968,” and so, in the election year 2020, Congress finally said lynching was a hate crime. Emmett Till was…
I’ve been thinking all day of how to meet you here, as my Lenten Journal begins for another year. Tonight I was looking through some notes and found this quote from James Baldwin in an article in Brainpickings. Once people know what they know, they make the unconscious assumption that they were born knowing what…
between noon and three I sit quietly I waited for words but they chose to be quiet what is there to say? Peace, Milton
I get it. I understand why the disciples couldn’t do it. Think of what they had already been through. First, Judas left after a confrontation with Jesus that made it pretty clear the rest of the evening was not going to be a celebration. Jesus followed by offering bread and wine as both meal and…
I was looking for a poem to post the other day and found one titled “There, there, grieving.” I remember a friend whose father died many years before mine recalling a trip to a mall soon after his funeral where she was overwhelmed by the fact that everyone was acting like it was a normal…
bearings as soon as the fires went out we started looking for hope among the ruins sharing the same picture over and over of the cross beaming in the rubble I read that the towers were still standing that the organ had not been destroyed heard promise after promise of rebuilding even as the smoke…
Earlier this afternoon I received this e-mail message from our church office: Dear Church family, We have been made aware of a family of four (mother, father, and twin boys age 7) who lost everything in a fire. Below is a list of what is needed for them to rebuild their household. Linens: Twin Sheet…
When I sat down tonight to write, what came to mind are songs that capture the emotions of the week ahead, which are not easy feelings. Part of the challenge every year for me is not to rush to Easter but to take the loss and grief seriously. Here, then, is my soundtrack, which is…