Reconciling Conversations
Readers of this blog will know that I have spent many years cultivating a form of worship that places the circle of reconciling conversation at the center. This Roundtable Worship, …
Mothers Day Reverberations
Mother’s Day didn’t arise as a Hallmark card sentiment but has an earlier expression in an impassioned plea from Julia Ward Howe to unite women around the world in the …
Desert Reflections
The electronic world makes it easy to forget the real world expanses of this planet. We just completed a 2400-mile road trip from the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina to …
Who’s Your Imbongi?
I have long been interested in the South African tradition of the imbongi. The figure of this classic Xhosa “praise singer” accompanied my thoughts as Nelson Mandela returned to his …
Kings, Messiahs, and Mandela
After a couple of weeks devoted to moving my website to a new host, I am finally able to reflect with you on two events – one perennial and one …
Rights and Relationships
Political arguments in America are being strangled by our preoccupation with rights to the exclusion of relationships as the focus of our ethics. Whether in arguments over abortion, gun violence, …
The Winding Cloth
The electronic revolution increasingly knits us all on planet Earth into a common consciousness, a common memory. It also makes possible an increasing degree of empathy across the barriers of …
Singing the Words
For many of us, the source and power of poetry lies in its oral performance. It is first of all an oral and auditory medium. Indeed, this power of the …
Mountains, Men, Mines and Minerals
We have just returned from six weeks in the Western Cape of South Africa and ten days exploring central Namibia, its neighbor to the north. While it is the people …
Homer, Chiefs, and Presidents
While visiting in Cape Town, I recently had the pleasure of taking a summer school course at the University of Cape Town on Homer’s Iliad, from Professor Richard Whitaker, who …
Titanic Revelations
Sometimes we don’t know where certain messages come from as we muse, fingering some words to give our intuitions substance. I think this poem comes from the haunting reverberations of …
Moving Midway: Toward Reconciliation
We recently saw an arresting documentary film entitled “Moving Midway,” a story about saving an old North Carolina plantation house and discovering the family histories behind it. Midway was a …
Rachel’s Weeping and Our Response
During the Christmas season we are confronted by two texts that not only speak to, but seem to arise out of, the grief that has swept this country in the …
Peace Conference 2012
Every Fall for the past five years more than 300 people have convened here for the Lake Junaluska Peace Conference. This posting is a report on that conference. This year’s …