Revision Footnotes are tedious. Revisions are more difficult. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to have a working draft. Thankfully, I have one for every chapter. But saying more with fewer words? Making ideas clear, arguments compelling, and stories faithful?…
Read MoreAdvent III
Promises It was with some guilt that I turned down a coaching opportunity last night for Academic Ladder. I told Coach Susanne about finishing my book and said, “I need to keep my promise to myself.” Sometimes that’s harder than…
Read MoreOrdinary Time XI
Beach Memos I took more time away from this blog than I intended. But apparently I needed the rest. Part of my time away was spent at the beach. Over the next few weeks I plan to share a few…
Read MoreEpiphany II
Imagination This month I am working on an article with my partner in research in the Learning Pastoral Imagination Project. Chris Scharen and I are writing about pastoral imagination itself. And as a part of that we are reviewing literature…
Read MoreOrdinary Time XXXIII
Rant on binge writing “I do not like it, Sam I am!” I’m with Dr. Seuss on this one. I do not like binge writing – that is excessive and obsessive writing for long stretches of time that robs one…
Read MoreOrdinary Time XX
So Noted My first conscious memory of note-writing comes from the elementary school. The teacher gave us lined paper. We had to learn the parts of a letter and fill in all out completely. Date. Name and address. Salutation. Body.…
Read MoreOrdinary Time XXXVII
For me this week, which ends the church year, also marks coming around full circle in a year of blogging. I began with Advent last year. So this week I will take time to read through all 93 entries of the past year. Except for a six week sabbath in July and August, I blogged twice weekly. I will be noticing themes, ideas, patterns, and even things that are missing.
Read MoreOrdinary Time XXXIII
This post is especially for the many of you who are also writers, or aspiring writers, sermon writers, devotional writers, academic writers, bloggers, and journal-keepers. This week I took steps to solidify one of my most central habits. I have a habit of writing. It has been slow coming.
Read MoreOrdinary Time XXII
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 IX
The beach is awash in rocks. Each one a solid idea. Some round. Some fitting perfectly into an open palm. Others jagged. Miniscule. Others large as islands. Piles of ideas rolling around in the sea of time. Bumping into one another until no sharp edges remain.
Read MoreOrdinary Time II
I spent the summer of 1990 in Birmingham, Alabama. Like most summers in the deep South, it was hot, sweltering and sticky that summer. I had completed my first semester of seminary, and wanted to get some “field work” under my belt. So I applied to be an editorial assistant at Woman’s Missionary Union. I’d grown up on a steady diet of missions literature and practice which came out of Birmingham, so this was a bit like going to the holy city for me. Like most pilgrimages it had its moments of awe and its moments of disillusionment. It also held moments of learning and friendship, which have deepened across the years.
Read MoreEaster VII
A Decade of practice: This year feels like a series of milestones in a way. Why do we think that 10 years makes a difference? Why not nine years? or 12 and 1/2? Nonetheless. It was during the last few months of 1999 when my full-time work in and for a congregation came to an end. And a new vocation, or really a revised longer-term vocation, began to take shape. I started graduate school in the fall of 2000 and began learning the practices of becoming a scholar. This is scholarship that I understand to be for the sake of the church.
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