Not even Judas
Hidden on the mountainsides of Appalachia lives beneath majestic canopies a tree they call the Judas tree. Its purple buds begin the spring break through the bark betrayed by winter’s …
My Father Ran
My father ran. He ran for Peddie School over muddy paths along New Jersey’s streams. He ran for Lehigh on the tracks in Bethlehem. He ran alone in teams …
Bursting Fourth
America begins again each year with a Big Bang so loud we cannot hear, the smoke so dense we cannot breathe, the light so bright we cannot see the dead, …
A Masked and Virtual Easter
From the isolation of our fears you lead us out with everlasting arms of love. In the mask that shrouds you in death’s mystery we see the revelation …
Imagining the Way of Peace
Our Interfaith Peace Conference on “The Arts of Peace: Imagining the Way” has come to pass, moving from anticipation into memory. Sylvia and I now live “APC” (After the Peace …
Roundtable Worship: August 2019
As many of you know, for the past sixteen years a group of ten to twenty people has gathered monthly around a round table for a kind of worship gathering …
Transitions in Scotland
We just returned from two weeks in Scotland. Many months ago we planned to visit the Island of Iona to participate in a week-long retreat at the historic Abbey. We …
Intercession
In the small town where I live it is not unusual to hear people say in parting “I will pray for you.” If not “you,” then it might be your …
The Faure Requiem with Poetry
On October 14 our choir at First United Methodist Church in Waynesville, North Carolina, presented six movements of the beloved Requiem by Gabriel Fauré as the heart of a service …
Cardinal Fears
Wild wings flashing He Cardinal thrashes enemies, marauders of his nest, his mate, his reddened honor. Daylight wakes his vigilant …
Poetry and Public Prayer
We Americans are once again in a full-throated struggle over the viability of our republican institutions of constitutional government. The would-be despot our founders feared has indeed seized administrative control …
Charlie and Harold
A few weeks ago I took part once again in the Poet’s Gathering in Winston-Salem North Carolina, sponsored by Press 53. In one of our workshops Adrian Rice, a poet …
Remembering Martin, In Fearful Times
We will not let our fear beget the fear that frozen into bullets separates us from the love that frees us from such fear, that …
Galactic Sipapu
I hear that every spiral galaxy has only one black hole, an eye to look into the nothing that contains the light of stars too vast to count, …
The Ashes Are Falling
Living in one of the world’s great temperate hardwood forests, I become familiar with the trees around me. Not all, by any means, because we have such an expanse of …