…I have a matted print of Mother Emanuel in my office that I purchased at the Charleston Market. I am inspired every time I look at it because of the deep and authentic faith the people of this church have displayed.
Read MoreI know it’s difficult to think long-range in the middle of a crisis that requires hourly updates and minute-by-minute adjustments to plans. But let’s try for just a moment.
Choose a date somewhere further than six months from now - is it Thanksgiving? Christmas? New Years Eve? Perhaps a big birthday coming up. See yourself there surrounded by your people. Imagine your conversation and activities, the food, the smells, the laughter and the tears. What are your hopes for that moment?
In the summer of 2017 our nation experienced a solar eclipse… A co-worker managed to get a few pair of the special glasses required to look at the sun as the moon covered it over - it was fascinating. The thing I remember most about that day, though, is the coming together in awe and wonder - people all over the nation - experiencing and living though a natural phenomenon that dazzled us…
And now, the COVID-19 reality has finally sunk in to our collective consciousness - forcing us to come to terms with significant disruption and serious individual responsibility. It struck me how the same sense from the eclipse, that feeling of “it’s happening to all of us” is true, although in this case, it is not good.
Today is the first day of the second week of the new decade. How’s it been going so far? My hunch is that you are hard at it, honing and developing those well though-out new habits that you’d like to incorporate this year. A lot of us are raising the exercise ante, determined to create some kind of momentum that will carry us through the “I don’t feel like it!” doldrums. We are trying to eat healthy, live kindly, and view the coming days with optimism.
Read More… As I sat in the middle of the road behind the steering wheel, flashers on, aggravating drivers behind me, waiting on police to arrive, I breathed. I breathed and I thought to myself - “What are you feeling? How would you speak to yourself at this moment if you were someone in your congregation?”
Read MoreI am not here. I was busy last week preparing for not being here, packing luggage and hoping I had EVERYTHING I need for this assignment. At some point, you have to say, “It is enough.”
How I’ve thought about enough has shifted and shaped and risen and declined. Am I enough? Do I have enough? Am I doing enough? Is God enough?
Read MoreThe 2019 World Series begins today! Baseball is my sport, a favorite pastime, and I’m almost always tuned in for the World Series, even when my team is not playing.
Read MoreI wrote this three months ago:
I will turn 60 years old in a few months - that is feeling a bit like an out-of-body experience. Hard to think of myself as 60, until I realize the ages of my children and grandchildren and the trove of memories we share, and realize those memories would only fit in a 60-year-old trunk.
Read MoreI confess to a temptation. This temptation is to become somewhat of a hermit, at least in regard to paying attention to current events. The constant drip of politics, celebrity goings-on, crises and people-doing-bad-things - I just get so weary of it. And the times when I’ve taken a break and disregarded the news did not seem to make a big difference in the world continuing to spin. So I am tempted to just check out permanently.
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