Another hot late September day. It promises to be 90 degrees. Between our president and the leader of North Korea, another session of bitch-slapping, saber rattling. A formation of B-1 bombers and F-15 fighters made a pass along the coast of North Korea. What is the next move going to be and who will…
I read a review in the New Yorker about a book of poems entitled Night by Etel Adnan. The next day I submitted my order to Amazon. For many years I have carried a copy of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets in my briefcase where ever i go. Adnan’s work will join the Eliot…
There are seasons of life. In the late 1970’s I was a student learning to swim in the vast ocean of philosophy. With a bit more focus next I studied at Garrett Evangelical Divinity School in Evanston. I assumed the professional end of all of the study was to become a Christian minister. For…
The end of summer, the inception of fall is always a sad time for me. I will miss the radiance of long days, the heat which enables the tomato vines to produce, and the festivals of music. As the days shorten, become cooler, bees become more active gathering supplies for the severe months, and…
The poem haunts me. I receive one poem a day via email from the poetry foundation. Most I read once and discard due to my inability to resonate with the words. This one gets to me. It describes the speakers encounter with a “crazy” street preacher, Brother Rickey, while waiting for the pedestrian crosswalk…
My slave holding people of the mid 1800s who lived in the South deserve more consideration for their brutal attitudes toward blacks, —than do we for our racism toward people of color. The slave trade, referred to by Southeners as “our peculiar institution” was the fading, dying residue of an ancient institution. The Slavery…
Yesterday late afternoon as we returned from a family birthday celebration, a dark towering bank of clouds filled the horizon to the north. From past experience I knew that rain was in those clouds, maybe lightening and a lot of wind. Everyday it is the same. In some direction a threatening cloud fills the…
We live by the economy of gifts, the only economy that will last. To be in one’s right mind is to know the right use of gifts. To ask for more than is given, to take more than is given back, is to have less, and finally nothing. It follows the law of Nature,…
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’er-sways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out Against the wreckful siege of battering days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout,…
This poem came my way this morning. To be human is not fixed, a given. Its a process of learning. The curve of a individual life lived can result in wreckage, or complex beauty. I wonder if it is possible to achieve the latter without a relationship to animals? A PRAYER TO TALK TO…
