I am someone who very much believes that God cannot be confined to the narratives and metaphors religion uses to describe the immanent divine. Whatever is sacred is so much grander than our meager language could ever do justice, and so I struggle even with the Bible or with the Church in its definitions of […]
What it Means to Know a Place, or Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
For the past month, when I’ve been driving around, I’ve had the radio on “scan” just trying my hardest to get a feel for what Long Island and Connecticut (since we pick up some of those stations) have to offer. I’m fairly certain at this point that there’s some kind of unstated rule where every […]
St. Joseph
and the seed of the cottonwood fell like snow the day you were married by the Lake, as a young sparrow perched on the white gate tilting his head at the reading of your vows to hear and know what love is before flitting away at the caw and cry of the eager mourning dove […]
From Point A to Point B
One of the first times I got on a plane, I remember being mesmerized less by the crazy notion that I was several thousand feet above the earth and more by the notion that in a matter of hours I had gone from point A to point B and found myself plopped into an entirely […]
On the Road to Racial [and other types of] Reconciliation
On my ride aboard the Long Island Rail Road returning from a trip to New Jersey this weekend, I thought a lot about a course I took at Vanderbilt Divinity where we were discussing racial reconciliation, and on the table was a really tough question about whether black congregations and white congregations should be worshiping […]
Peace Corps on Shelter Island?
At the risk of sounding like I’m boasting, I’ll avoid any overuse of the words “idyllic” or “bucolic” or “precious” to describe the little island I recently moved to on the East End of Long Island. But it’s hard not to have this strange overwhelming sense of awe when I drive around Shelter Island – […]
From the Wisdom of Solomon to Baltimore
There was a risky wager made when Lincoln gave the South a chance to be reconciled to the North without greater punishment than the loss both sides had so deeply suffered already, a wager that hinged on the hope that the “better angels of our nature” would prevail. The understandable hope was that time would […]
Cultivating Change from Then to Now
My family’s house in Jackson – the home I was raised in – sits on a wooded hill that’s made mostly out of a reddish mud-clay mixed with brown top-soil. I’ve no idea if those are the correct geological terms for what the stuff is; I just know that’s what it looks and acts like. […]
Some Thoughts for a Good Friday
The world has become ugly and dark. Terrorist groups slaughter. The wealthy grow wealthier as the poor remain poor. The planet itself is slowly but surely dying off, we’re told. Our most precious resources are grown increasingly scarce. Our best politicians follow the money instead of the heart. And for most of us that’s just […]
Jennings Point
coarse, cold, the sand about the wintered beach was mixed with snow, and I could not tell the difference, save the crunch of those crystal pebbles below my leather soles, and near, five old rocks like giants guard the Peconic’s dance of unnamed hues in the mystic moat: coarse, cold, but weathered in the way […]
