a good way to spend an evening

The first Toni Morrison book I ever read was her first book, The Bluest Eye, which tells the story of Pecola, a young African-American girl growing up in Lorain, Ohio in the 1940s. Because of her mannerisms and her dark skin, she is considered “ugly.” She has a doll that is white. Pecola wishes she…

My sermon this week is from a parable of Jesus often called “The Persistent Widow.” It is not one of my favorites but seemed worth wrestling with. What I found is the title shares the story short. There’s a lot going on in the parable worth talking about. _____________________________ I grew up in a family…

I finished the Gospel of Mark in the new translation by David Bentley Hart. I also finished a chapter in Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno, which was written in 1912 and translated by J. E. Crawford Flitch. The two translations are a century apart and aimed at two different purposes, but they…

Teddy Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” The quote has come to mind this week in an unexpected way because I have watched the way comparison is used to deflect or derail a discussion. One says, “We need to close the detention camps,” and another replies, “Obama built them.” One says, “We need…

It was already over by the time I got there. Ginger and I went to dinner with some folks and I turned on the Red Sox game when we got home, as I am wont to do on a summer evening, to find that the score was 14-3 in favor of the Toronto Blue Jays….

I veered from the lectionary this week to look at Jesus’ encounter with the two on the road to Emmaus, one of the stories I most love. ____________________________ One of my favorite things about reading scripture is coming across the gaps that remind us that we don’t have the whole story. We have talked about…