When a flood overruns the banks of a river, things are swept into surprising places. In early May of 2010 my neighborhood and all of Nashville saw the most dramatic flood in living memory. The news cameras caught a building floating down the interstate. One child was swept through a culvert only to survive. The rivers roses to inundate homes, schools, businesses, cars, roads and bridges. The death toll was over 30. The financial cost of the destruction was estimated in the billions. Efforts to sort through the damage and rebuild from the destruction continue and will for months and years to come.
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All Saints’ Eve . . . I spent the last few days at the American Academy of Religion . . . and came home in time for Halloween Trick-or-Treat. Driving home this afternoon I thought of the many friends old and young who have been lost to me. So many of them will be remembered this year on the first All Saints’ Day following their deaths.
Read MoreOrdinary Time XXX
Margaret Atwood’s Nashville Debut It was her first time in Nashville. She used to listen to the Grand Ole Opry in the cold winter of northern Canada. When they got short wave radio reception. So because it was her first…
Read MoreOrdinary Time XXIX
Yesterday I got lost for an hour taking pictures of acorns and oak leaves. The sun was autumn bright. The sky a brilliant blue. Some leaves were still green. Others were tinged red and yellow. Little stripes on the acorns…
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This Sunday some of us will hear from Luke’s gospel of Jesus. It is a parable about praying. It starts like this. . . . Luke 18:9-10: He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray
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Deeper Into the Shadows. Last post I wrote about some of the complexity of racism and white privilege as seen in American pop culture. If you follow the link to the description of the Rat Pack you will find another element in that complexity: gender.
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Me and My Shadow: Fans of the Rat Pack and their 1960s version of “Me and My Shadow” still argue about whether the friendship of the Hollywood stars was a resistance to racism or recapitulation of it.
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We are coming to the end of the season of the church year we call “Ordinary Time” but tomorrow is no ordinary day. At least not for Mary Beth Dunbar-Duke. She will be ordained tomorrow afternoon in a special service at Providence Baptist Church in Cookeville, Tennessee.
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Tuesday. Two stories on NPR this morning gave me pause: Graphene and At Home: A Short History of Private Life. Rolling around in my head was an essay I had read on Monday evening, which raised the question of whether practical theology might best be thought of as art or science. In The Challenge of Practical Theology, Stephen Pattison argues that “sciencism” has run rough shod over, well, nearly everything. We are so enamoured by science, he says, that we measure most everything else against it.
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Going to Seed . . . We made what will likely turn out to be the last big harvest of the season at the garden today. My husband and daughter dug two tubs of peanuts and 10 crates of sweet potatoes. (One sweet potato was as large as my daughter’s head! Most were just average size.) I picked a bag full of okra, reaching over my head to pull plants down and clip the pods.
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A Walk Down to the Lake
Deadline days
fill my mind with words and work
and give me tunnel vision
So when a small break between projects opens up . . .
Ordinary Time XXI
When I travel especially on vacation, I find myself drawn often to the pottery of a place. It seems to me to be a melding of a place’s natural resources and it’s local artists in a form of beauty I have a hard time resisting. Maybe I romanticize the authenticity that a bowl or mug can offer, but nonetheless I’m drawn to it. This summer was no exception. On both family vacation trips I found myself buying up small pieces of pottery for gifts and for use in my office and kitchen.
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One of the central metaphors for my work and sense of vocation is a bridge. This summer I saw one of the most iconic bridges of the American imagination: Golden Gate in San Francisco, California. Both days we got close to the bridge it was shrouded partially in fog. Not unusual in the Bay area. Not unusual for the work of bridge building and walking.
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I am not a coffee drinker. But I’m pretty happy to smell a pot of brew perking along. A few evenings ago I found myself standing at the threshold of many a coffee drinker’s holiest of grounds. The original Starbucks is located in Pike’s Market in Seattle, Washington. However by 8 pm no one is around to partake in the daily grind, so they close up shop.
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Last time I checked in, I was still in a state of dazed confusion. But grateful for the disorientation of not knowing and on my way to part two of the celebration of Eid ul-fitr. My pastors and I had been at a gathering of several thousand Muslims for their prayer service following on the end of Ramadan.
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Cultural Daze (Part I): I’m not in culture shock exactly. But I do feel a bit dazed after spending most of yesterday in situations where everything was new and unfamiliar to me. I was in a minority. I stood out in ways that made me feel uncomfortable. I did not understand most of what I heard or saw. I tried to prepare, but reading and asking a few questions was not adequate. I tried to participate, but I kept feeling like I was getting things wrong. In fact I was getting things wrong.
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One of the delights of my vacation this summer was building rock cairns along the way. The first I built were on the banks of the South Fork of the Kings River. We were at the far end of Kings Canyon National Park, the sometimes ignored sibling of Sequoia National Park. My family and I spent a long stretch of one late morning in the Zumwalt Meadow just tossing rocks in the river, wandering along the bank, staring up at brilliant skies.
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Big Trees
One of the joys of my recent family vacation in California was seeing the amazing redwoods and giant sequoias. One of this week’s lectionary texts is Psalm 1. Here is the translation . . .
Ordinary Time XIV
Packing Tonight we packed up for a trip. I do this a lot, but it still isn’t automatic. Thinking about what to take for the weather, the planned events, unforeseen needs. Do we have the camera and batteries? Sunglasses and…
Read MoreOrdinary Time XIII
Wash It Out: One day while I was at Asilomar I was trying to explain to someone why I try to practice detachment. I said something like, “Well, it’s just important to me for everything in life. And I’m not very good at it. That’s why I have to practice.” We laughed. “It’s important for everything, huh?” Yep. I hang on to all sorts of things. How about you? Clothes become the days that I wore them. . . .
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Freedom to Worship
I accidentally heard Neal Boortz (had to look up the spelling) for a couple of minutes on the radio yesterday. I was immediately searching for a place to vomit. He literally made me feel ill. His invective against all people of Islamic faith is astounding. Really astounding.
