Tag: memory
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Complaints about “Wokeness” …
… need context. The event described in this article – and its cover-up – is part of the context. [Be forewarned – it’s gruesome. Think Psalm 137:9.] It seems to me that when we – whoever we are – complain about “wokeness,” we need to remember that it’s a response to a problem. Not a…
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What I Always Think Of Today …
“It’s the days getting shorter, and the frosty nights,and the pumpkins big and small;it’s the season after summer, it’s before the winter,it’s the fall, it’s the fall, it’s the fall!”[from “The Fall Song,” the TV show Barney] and our daughter, who was once, and is no longer, 3 years old. Image: “Autumn in France,” 1910,…
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Summer Solstice Day
For the height of summer: a song, and a poem. The lyrics, and another version of the song here. An analysis of the poem here. Image: “Midnight sun” (cropped), Yan Zhang, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Reflecting on Deuteronomy 8 1-11
In Deuteronomy 8:10, Moses (the speaker) tells the assembled Israelites that “you will eat your fill and you will bless the HOLY ONE your God for the good land he has given you.” Given the context, it may actually be a little less like a prediction, and a little more like Mom saying to our…
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Memories
In the fall of 1994 the Presbyterians were building a new church building. Long before the building was finished, though, something needed to be done about the landscaping. Because there was a sloping strip of dirt about ten feet wide that ran the entire length of the property on the far side of the parking…
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R.I.P. and Thanks, James Ensor
James Ensor (April 13 1860 – November 19, 1949) was the post-impressionist/early expressionist artist who gave the world Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889. My “bucket list” has never been long. But from the time I fell in love with this painting at first sight from the plate in some modern art text, seeing the…
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What We Call Essential
Have you ever had to see your past from a whole new angle? It happened this morning, in church, to me. “This is a sermon about one of the most popular and well-known verses in the Bible,” said our pastor, introducing the sermon … He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what…
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Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Celebrating Our Bicentennial II)
This was the big day. This was a long day. People arrived early, to attend to last minute preparations, like putting the tree to be decorated during Sunday school in place, making copies of the program for the day, dropping off food for the buffet table. People stayed late, cleaning up, clearing the tables, putting…
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Seventh Sunday After Epiphany
We said our last good-byes as a congregation to Mr. Warren Moses this morning, at a memorial service before the regularly scheduled Sunday worship service. Nothing elaborate. Just several of the members of the congregation standing up to tell a personal story or two about how Warren had touched our lives, had left an indelible…
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The Past Casts a Long Shadow
Saul is from Gibeah (1 Samuel 10:26). (!!) Gibeah is the site of the atrocity in Judges 19 (Judges 19:12ff). The aftermath of that atrocity draws in Jabesh-gilead (Judges 21), so that the people of Gibeah are related to the people from Jabesh-gilead after that. Saul’s first act as king is to rescue the people…
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Hello, Friend!
A lot of birds have visited the bird feeder outside the office window this spring, more than usual, for who knows what reason. We’ve attracted a brown-headed cowbird (not necessarily something to celebrate, but what can you do), and we’ve had a towhee hanging around, which in years past we’ve only ever seen in the…
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Surprise – It’s Tradition
Teaching plus rehearsing for the concert coming up on Saturday and Sunday is leaving precious little time for anything else, including remembering to stock up on ibruprofen and immune system support before leaving the house, which explains why I was standing in the checkout line at Walgreens on Frankfort Avenue before rehearsal with a bottle…
Matters of Interpretation 