Woodstock happened the summer before I started high school. I was living in Nairobi, Kenya. Later that fall, I got a copy of the soundtrack, and then my first guitar that Christmas. Some of the first songs I learned were off that record: “Drugstore Truck-Drivin’ Man,” “Wooden Ships,” and “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To…
I came home from working in my window seat at the Marketplace and found a post from a friend who talked about being “smacked in the face again by some serious meanness.” As I was digging through some old notes tonight, I found a short story I wrote a long time ago. I don’t write…
“Metaphors in Motion”—Mark 11:1-11 A Sermon for First Church of Christ, Congregational of East Haddam, Connecticut Palm Sunday, March 25, 2018 When we talk about it, we make it sound like a parade: Jesus’ “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem. We picture crowds lining the streets, even throwing down their garments like a red carpet, waving palm…
It’s astonishing to see the swirl of hope and energy around the March for Our Lives, which will happen across the country tomorrow. In our little snow globe town of Guilford, Connecticut, we are having a march of our own, rather than going to one of the larger ones because our community was touched deeply…
One of the cool things I got to do this week was be a part of the book launch for David Finnegan-Hosey’s new book, Christ on the Psych Ward, which I had the honor of editing. A group of about fifty gathered at Potter’s House in Washington DC and heard David interviewed by Mike Stavlund, a…
I spent the past week in Durham, North Carolina and then took the train to Washington DC for the book launch of Christ on the Psych Ward by David Finnegan-Hosey. I rode the train home today in the snow—our fourth Nor’easter in three weeks. One forecast I read said we could get from 4-12 inches…
weather report sometimes I learn things from my experience tonight I carried in the wood so it would be dry enough to burn if the heat goes out in the storm I bought the wood after the last nor’easter buried our log pile under a foot of snow it is still buried sometimes I learn…
I am going to be preaching several times at the First Church of Christ, Congregational of East Haddam, Connecticut over the next few weeks as they line up an intentional interim and begin looking for a new pastor. It is a lovely congregation. I got to preach there a couple of times last summer. Here…
When it comes to the weekends where we spring forward and fall back, acting as though we can set time and tell time and save time, I think about youth camp years ago in Texas. One of the kids in the youth group lamented that we had to get up so early in the morning—breakfast…
I was in fourth grade at Lusaka International School. My teacher was Mrs. Reedy. One day she came to class with a new book called A Wrinkle in Time and she said she would read to us at the end of the day if we finished our work. All it took was one afternoon of…