Journey

Ten years ago, I was moving back into this house after a five month sojourn around town. The house had burned in March and we spent the spring and summer inhabiting interesting digs: a condo designed for folks who wanted a nice place close to campus for football weekends, followed by the summer in an [...]

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This morning at mass we sang “Servant Song” for the presentation of the gifts. This is the one that starts out with “What do you want of me, Lord? Where do you want me to serve you.” It became even more moving to me than usual because of Mery. Mery is our newest music team [...]

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Have you ever heard a “born-again” Christian refer to being “convicted”? I’ve spend some time thinking about that phrasing. So often it is taken to mean that Jesus, as judge and jury has taken someone into a court of law, and tried that person and found that person “guilty.” An unloving, uncharitable, hard-line image, to [...]

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Listening to NPR this afternoon on the way home from Birmingham, I caught the story by Raolh Eubanks about how the Bookmobile influenced his life (see this article).  Impressive, because the librarian (in Missisippi in the 60′s) followed the law instead of ignoring it, and brought the book mobile by his home… as a black [...]

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Last week I spent a couple of days where I had to just breathe and be in order maintain composure. I wonder at some things — like what are folks who tend toward certain political stances afraid of? I hear the fear and self-defense of those who support the T-party. It seems that all one, [...]

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A couple of weeks ago, while on vacation in Maine, we occupied our slow moments with the construction of a jigsaw puzzle. Yes, we allow ourselves to display the box top with the finished product pictured… even so, with the image that we were seeking to recreate, we would find that pieces would seemingly hide [...]

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I’m reading “Deeper Than Words: Living the Apostle’s Creed” by Br. David Stendl-Rast. Brother David takes me places that make me uncomfortable. If I am honest, I have to admit that the majority of the time I define myself by how well I follow the rules — my goodness, or lovability is defined by how [...]

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Yesterday I was lucky enough to spend a few hours boating along the Connecticut coastline. We started on the Pawcatuck River, down to the coast, over to Mystic and in as far as the second bridge (the one near the Mystic Seaport) and back. The water was smooth, there was a lovely breeze. We made [...]

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While visiting western NY state, we took the time to make our way to Chautauqua Institute and take in a lecture by David Brooks (the NY Times columnist.) Mr. Brooks and I often look at the same data and come to wildly differing conclusions. Nevertheless, I found his talk to be interesting, enlightening, entertaining and [...]

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We’ve been travelling and taking advantage of the XM radio available in my car by listening to XM 6 — which is all 60′s music. I was a preteen and young teenage in the 60′s — I was a bit young to take off for Woodstock, but not too young to revel in it. The [...]

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