Vocational Seasons
At our Roundtable Worship gathering on September 14 we focused our conversation and prayers on the question, What is my vocation at this stage of my life? With our reading …
Letting go…of the Truck
We bipeds have intense and peculiar relationships with quadrupeds and their successors—our four-wheeled vehicles. This is especially true of the male of our species. I can still remember my first …
Roundtable Liturgy for August
I have decided to post the liturgies from our Roundtable Worship regularly in this space. The first reason is that the opening liturgy gives voice to my “sense of the …
Courthouse Protest
Like millions of other Americans I have been spending an hour each week lifting a sign of protest against the tyrannical actions of the Trump administration. Locally, this takes the …
Shelves for Sylvia
Sylvia saw the design for this in a recent edition of Fine Woodworking. (“Modular Shelf System,” by Charlie Peterson, No. 315, pp. 224–31.) She asked if I might draw from …
Brookgreen Gardens
We have just returned from five days in the Low Country on the coast of South Carolina between Myrtle Beach and Georgetown. We spent much of three days at the …
A Declaration of Political Liberty
My “Prayer for the Republic” (February 8, 2025) is an expression of what we might call a revival of public piety. For too long the symbols, rituals, and writings of …
Pray for the Republic
We pray for the republic where each voice is heard speaking freely from the heart, where each ear is bent upon the task of understanding, where the stranger finds a …
Bishops, Kings, and Tyrants
On January 21, 2025, Bishop Mariann Budde of the Episcopal diocese of Washington DC turned to the newly inaugurated President Donald Trump at the end of her homily during the …
Cosmic Christ and New Creation
On November 24, the last Sunday of the church year, I collaborated with our worship leaders in organizing a service that would move us from the symbolism of “Christ the …
After the Flood
As with the Jewish practice of “sitting shiva,” I have been staying still as I absorb the return to our national presidency of the tyrant our founders feared and tried …
A Death Adorned
Plucked from out the cowering sprigs huddled on the sidewalk at the Walmart, the little redbud shoot had promise, form, a single stalk that might …
Coming to the Table
Three strands of my life have coalesced in the recent publication of two books. First, in 2000 I built my first round communion table, which was followed by several more …
Meeting Roger Williams (again)
I have long known that one of my distant ancestors is Roger Williams, the seventeenth century founder of Rhode Island. (For you genealogists: Roger, Daniel, Peleg, Daniel, Thomas, Mary (Hoag), …
What is Pravda?
When the Communist Party of Russia came to power in 1918, they set up a newspaper that would be their official organ of propaganda until the collapse of the Soviet …