I am sitting on a conveyor belt riding through an assembly-line type of arrangement, but at each station I pass there is a devil with a pitchfork trying to poke me. I have passed five or six stations when this part of the meditation ends. I feel ashamed and embarrassed. This fragment of a long-ago […]
Summer came early in Charlotte this year; well before the solstice the heat soared into the 90’s with humidity to match. Now we’ve endured a two-week long heat wave with no relief, not even from the frequent thunder showers that were predicted in the area, but failed to materialize. As each day heats up, the […]
Listen to what a woman in her late thirties or early forties reported to me last week: she has two kids, one in middle school and one a rising high school student, and all their activities; she works two part-time jobs that together are more than one full-time one; and she is married with a […]
Charlotte has had a particularly dry year this winter and spring, although no one is saying the “d” word yet. I moved here from Northern California where two particularly bad droughts have imprinted on me a need to keep track of rainfall, mostly on the subconscious level. The droughts I lived through there required us […]
This morning I’m singing the “What’s it all about, Alfie?” song. What does it mean that we come together as a church? Is this all there is? I want something more dynamic and alive, more connected and contemporary. I am looking for the people with the most depth and capacity for love. I’m looking for […]
From the quiet, intimate melodies of Keith Jarrett’s “I love you Porgy” to the uptempo blast of Duke Ellington’s “Take the A train”, nothing illustrates individual expression better than Jazz music. Think of Count Basie, Oscar Peterson and Dave Brubeck. How different they are from each other and yet they all fall within the Jazz […]