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When It Feels Like the End of the World

I’ve not known what to say in response to the election; but the challenge and gift of preaching on Sunday, November 13, at All Souls’ Episcopal Cathedral resulted in this sermon. Rather than try to edit it for a blog post, I am simply posting the entire...

Dying to Live in the Moment

Yesterday afternoon, as the last Bioethics class of the week began, a student said, “Let’s not have a downer today.” I understood completely.  For several days, we’d talked about life and death—about how we know when someone is clinically dead: when...

Name-Calling and Ivory Soap

Name-calling and “cussin’”were bad things my grandparents, parents and teachers told me not to do. My grandmother Ada once took a chunk of Ivory Soap (“99 44/100 pure”!) in her hand, held it less than a half-inch from my lips, and threatened to wash my mouth out with...

Making the Days Count

This past week, in a conversation about my ongoing journey with Multiple Myeloma, a friend said, “If you hadn’t gotten this diagnosis . . . . ”  I didn’t hear the rest of her question, because I was so startled by my immediate internal response: “I wouldn’t want...

Being and Becoming Ourselves

Though my children are well into their thirties now, my heart hears echoes of “Daddy, tell me a story.” I cherished story-time with Amanda and Eliot. Sometimes I read other people’s stories to them; it was a delight to watch their eyes widen as we traveled through the...

Autumn

Bruce Springsteen is 67, and Bonnie Raitt will soon be. Eric Clapton is 71; so are Van Morrison and Steve Martin. Lucinda Williams is 63. David Letterman and Emmylou Harris are 69.Some of my students at Mars Hill University have grandparents who are younger than these...