It is incumbent on me, after many long days of roiling about politics and religion, to pause and address a matter of great and life saving importance. Ham, O best beloved, in Coca Cola. Probably everybody already knows about this. Indeed, I did know about it. It was always there, nestled in one of my Nigella books, in a section about Trashy Food. I would pass over it in my rush to get to Chocolate Pots, for which, even though... Read more
Usually the most pressing concern on my mind, whenever there is a national holiday on a Monday, is Will Aldi Be Open? Monday is the day that we quietly crash into the ground and then painstakingly stand up again, and the day I wander up and down those hallowed aisles, praising God for German chocolate and sauerkraut. Then I toddle home and sit around pushing Elphine through her homework. When the whole world has a holiday, I find my gentle... Read more
I very piously and dutifully spent the entire day at church, yesterday, laboriously gluing bits of paper to wooden boards, all for the love of Jesus, I kept telling myself. In a sane world I would have just cut and pasted some bible verses into some documents, printed them out, and left a stack of papers on the table for my Sunday school teacher. But nothing about the last decade of building these rooms has been that sane. It’s been... Read more
Update. This is pretty cool. I have an extremely busy day ahead of me, brought about by me waiting until the last possible minute to finish a big huge Sunday School project. Well, I say finish. Start is probably the more apt word. I hate it when I do this to myself. Anyway, since a lot of my work today will be mindless, I thought I would redeem the time by praying a little bit. There was an attack in... Read more
The Primates of the Anglican Communion are wending their weary ways home and we have, now, time to look at what they did and try to understand the implications for the future. I would rather do anything else, really, than think about this any more, but I read some headlines as I was trying to go to sleep, most of them exceedingly misleading. CNN reported that TEC had been “suspended” from the communion, which is rather grand a word for... Read more
A little dusting of snow during the night has rendered a fresh clean view from my bedroom window. Much as I hate the snow, I don’t mind its first, fresh fallen moments, at least from the inside. It is a picture of hope, sort of. It looks pretty. You can’t see all the black underneath for a bit, until it melts away and you are left facing the underlying reality. It is within human nature to hope, even when there... Read more
I live in the gently crumbling northeast, in one of those small time towns that used to be a big deal. I like to use the word ‘gently’ because it makes me feel better about the urban blight. It is a way of me saying to myself that what is happening here isn’t malign, it’s just what happens in the usual way of humanity. We start out with vision and energy, and eventually we crumble and die. It’s kind of... Read more
Some of you may have heard, perhaps even from me, that the Primates of the Anglican Communion are meeting this week. What is a primate, you ask? Well, it’s not, to employ an old and tired joke, a monkey, no matter how much any of them may act like one. No, it’s the main head of the church, the overseer, if you wanted to get all biblical about it. And what is the Anglican Communion? Well, you might think of... Read more
I see another person who I didn’t really know anything about, David Bowie, has gone from life to death. This has become the usual way that I learn about popular culture. I go along quietly doing my own thing, someone famous dies, I feel bad that I didn’t know anything about them, I read obsessively for several weeks and by then no one wants to talk about it any more. It’s how I heard of Amy Winehouse and some very... Read more
I oscillate between very systematic, strictly in order readings through the bible, and then meandering back and forth between the Old and New Testaments, racing through whole books at a time, as my whimsy takes me. After meticulously reading/listening to the bible chronologically, and then the old and new paced together, this time I’m hap-hazarding my way. I’ve been through about half of the Old Testament and have paused to jump ahead to the New. In the last two weeks... Read more
Preventing Grace
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In