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.
Read MoreOrdinary Time XXVI
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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