Essay

Building a Boat

My kids have a favorite new show: “Alone.” It’s a reality show where survival experts are dropped off in remote and hardly survivable conditions to compete for prize money, won by the last man standing. (We’re only halfway through season…
December 17, 2020
Essay

The Hat Trick Semester

In my last posting here, I introduced you to jazz bagpipes as a metaphor for COVID-Thanksgiving. I was fascinated by the talent and enthusiasm of the performer—and through the rabbit hole that is the interwebs, I learned that her name…
December 16, 2020
Essay

Advent Gloom

Advent: Discipleship in DarknessAn original work of poetry by moi Darkness. The dreadful darkness. The dismal darkness. The dreary darkness. The very, very, dark darkness. Four feeble candles on a wreath is all I have to hold back the bleak…
December 15, 2020
Essay

Barring Eleventh Hour Trickery

The Electoral College vote will be taken today and Joe Biden will officially be named President-elect. Eighty-one million voters will breathe a sigh of relief, and even reluctant Republicans like Mitch McConnell acknowledge they will recognize reality after today’s vote.…
December 14, 2020
Essay

Advent is for the Excluded — Shepherds

“In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.” - Luke 2:8 Why was the good news of the birth of Jesus first given to shepherds who were living outside with their…
December 13, 2020
Essay

The Evil Done on Our Behalf

In Zoom worship last Sunday, we said a prayer that we’ve said many times before, part of our prayers for the Confession of Sin. It read, in part, “We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have…
December 12, 2020
Essay

Political Iconoclasm

Like everyone else, I'm trying to negotiate the aftermath of a divisive election that has fractured my corner of the world. Almost every part of life has felt the effects: churches, schools, families, friendships—few things remain unscathed. Sure, the fault…
December 11, 2020
Essay

Searching for Joy

Last week I sat perched in my favorite perching place, where fallen tree meets standing tree. The Y-branches of the fallen tree jut out from where it intersects the still-standing tree and are just low enough that you can hop…
December 10, 2020
Essay

Secrets

I am about to share one of my deepest, darkest, most shameful secrets with you. It is a part of myself that makes me shudder in embarrassment; a secret that until recently I had never told anyone. But in this…
December 9, 2020
Essay

The Worst in Us

Experts from the fields of psychology and neurology claim that our memory is susceptible to error.  Sometimes we are sure we remember something that we actually never encountered.  I saw a click-bait sort of article recently that listed 10 things…
December 8, 2020