I wonder if any of you have this experience ... Let me try to describe it to you, as it all happens in my own head: I wake up in the morning, say at 6:45. I kind of wanted to wake up at 6, but I didn't. I woke up at 6:45. It is still […]

The other night my adult son was outside shucking sweet corn for dinner. He came inside with the corn and said, "It is so nice outside it almost felt like a sin sitting out there," or something to that effect. This reminded us of a time when my son was much, much younger, say 5 […]

So it has been a week (almost) of fasting from cable TV news. Aside from a little 15-minute "cheat" the other night I have stayed the course and some really nice space has opened up in my soul and my mind. This morning I read a poem by Rumi, a 13th century Sufi poet, and […]

  Some questions I've been asking myself lately: 1. Do American Christians know what has happened throughout history to the church when it makes "marriage vows" with the State?  (Think Constantine ...) 2. If followers of Jesus aren't going to care for the poor, be a voice for the voiceless and watch out for the […]

Late July ... It's that time of summer, isn't it? The freshness of the season has worn off, the air thick and hot, the grass browning at the edges, the flower gardens blooming with both goodness and weeds, the bugs out. I was thinking about a Thomas A Kempis quote recently while elbow-deep in the […]

A Mary Oliver poem for today ... The Morning Paper Read one newspaper daily (the morning edition is the best for by evening you know that you at least have lived through another day) and let the disasters, the unbelievable yet approved decisions, soak in. I don't need to name the countries, ours among them. […]