Absence
Today is probably the only truly liturgically dysfunctional Sunday of the year. Is it pink, or blue, or purple? Is it Mary’s Sunday? Is it Gaudete Sunday? Is it Mothering Sunday? Is it Stir Up Sunday? The third Sunday of Advent. So many customs from different times and places have accumulated and accrued on this […]
The Appearing
Jack Hardaway ] The small courier plane was flying low, too low, dipping and wavering back and forth over the tree tops, its engine sputtering and popping. It flew under some tall power lines, but didn’t quite make it. The tail snagged on the line, jerking the plane to a stop, and the plane plopped […]
Hope Takes Practice
Jack Hardaway ] “Hope is not a plan.” I hear that a lot. It’s an old and popular quote. I usually respond that hope is a theological virtue. Which always gets me a funny look. A theological virtue, that is a funny turn of phrase, it deserves a funny look. It is an ancient idea […]
Time to Love
Jack Hardaway ] Once upon a time my mother did Green Stamps. T’was the season of the green stamp. A wondrous season in my life. Pages and pages of stamps filling those little books, year after year. And the most amazing things would be brought home, purchased with those green stamp books. I still have […]
Dreaming of God
A friend once asked me, “Do you suppose God ever dreams?” My answer, “I know my dog sure does. You should see her, feet twitching and barking.” Does God dream? That’s one of those questions that kind of sticks with you like an ear worm, one of those song that just keeps going through your […]
Turning, Turning
We all carry within us tremendous power, an unquenchable fire. Faith and Hate. They are often confused. Faith always seems to carry the temptation to spiral downward into using God’s name to hate and exclude. That downward spiral sometimes carries a fierce indignation, sometimes a cold rationalism, other times a warm friendliness that mixes the […]
Road Work
Oh man. I have to be somewhere. I am in a hurry. I forget why… Of course this is when it always happens, it’s like a law of nature And there it is, yet again, that garish burnt orange road sign, construction up ahead, and the traffic at a standstill… And there he is again, […]
High Lonesome
Sometimes when someone is dying they have a distant look in their eyes, like they are seeing very, very far, a vast distance that is rapidly approaching, quickly encroaching. That stare of infinite distance. Advent is like that. The weariness of waiting and longing for what never arrives but is almost here, forever just beyond […]
Lighten Things Up
Are you afraid of the dark? Sometimes I am. Sometimes I’m not. I don’t know why. Sometimes I can be alone at night on the side of a mountain and be fine, just me the woods and all the critters hopping and crunching, hooting and yipping. And other times… I turn on every light in […]
The Beginning
Nothing announces the beginning of the day like the crow of a rooster in the soft gray light between darkness and sunrise. Sometimes you run across roosters in the most unusual places. I love running early in the morning in that place of gray light before sunrise when the sky begins to hint at the […]
Summer is Near
Waiting. We hate to wait. But so much of life is about waiting. Waiting is a lost art. Advent begins today. The Christian year begins today. Happy new years! Advent, we begin the season of expectant waiting. More like a child waiting on Christmas Eve than like waiting to renew our driver’s licenses at the […]