I can’t claim to know very much about jazz. I did see Miles Davis perform once—and he played the entire show without ever speaking to the audience. He did speak on other occasions and said things like this: Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there. Sometimes you have to play a long time to…
We gathered around our table tonight for another Thursday Night Dinner, which means we sat long after the food was finished to talk and tell stories. Somehow the conversation wound its way to one of the folks asking about those Christian sects that identified as “snake handlers.” His question and the answers that came from…
When I was in seminary, I pastored Pecan Grove Baptist Church, which was outside of Gatesville, Texas. To be more specific, the little white church sat next to a creek off of FM 107 between Oglesby and Mound. Now you know right where it was, or is—it’s still there. When I went drove down from…
In the waning minutes of this Easter night that will slip into a day that will mark, among other things, the running of the Boston Marathon and our twenty-fourth wedding anniversary, I am grateful for life, for the signs of resurrection, for the indefatigable light that refuses to be extinguished. I am grateful for another…
These two lines greeted me in an email from a dear friend today: Go to the edge of a cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down. — Ray Bradbury My first connection was to my favorite Guy Clark song, “The Cape” — he’s one of those who knows that life is…
In our Adult Confirmation Class that has met during Lent, we talked about writing a statement of faith. We also discussed how inadequate the verb believe is as a translation of the Greek word for faith, which is a verb. Trust would be a better choice, as far as English goes. With that in mind,…
One of the joys of living in the South is a big front porch, and one of the traditions of our porch is we populate it with Boston ferns every Spring, leaving them up until well into the fall (or winter) until they make our place look a little like Boo Radley’s house. A week…
it’s the name I found when I went looking for what happened on Wednesday of the Week we’ve labeled Holy — using capital letters as though there were some sort of scripted suspense instead of a simple day of preparation for Passover, for supper together, and the selling of one friend by another. No cloaks….
One of the highlights of my Lenten season has been my repeated listening to the new Jackson Browne tribute project, Looking Into You. Most of the songs have been a part of the soundtrack of my life for as long as they have been public record and I love to hear him sing them, still…
the last one on the plane and he took the last seat between me and the young soldier on his way home the old man had white curls under a pork pie hat, thin black glasses, a white shirt under a tweed sportscoat his pants fastened where waists used to be he aimed his conversation…