I’ve been thinking about death a fair bit lately. It’s not something I usually do, surrounded as I am by an over abundance of life. The mind doesn’t often turn to death when there are so many little people all around, and a puppy. But on the farther reaches of the mind, it is always there. It was in reading and thinking about the people killed in last few weeks, in California and Colorado and Paris and Mali, that I... Read more
Today is, as Matt just pointed out to me, Pearl Harbor Day, a day more real to me this year after receiving the incredible gift of getting to watch my grandfather, and other American Fighter Aces, receive the Congressional Medal of Honor this last May. It was one of those serendipitous experiences that you don’t get to anticipate because you don’t even know they’re on the horizon. A very short few weeks before the ceremony my grandmother called to say... Read more
I am collapsing, finally, after fumbling round in the dark just now, trying to silently fill up the shoes of the children with all manner of chocolates, tiny mandarin oranges, and toys. The two little girls are getting their first Fancy Russian Nesting Dolls, Gladys a little wooden globe, which, when you open it up, has lots of little children of the world inside, and Elphine a rough, unpainted, Russian Nesting Doll for her to exercise her fidgeting creativity over.... Read more
I need to be up and in the car, looking for oranges and some other stuff, and then cleaning my house, and then just generally trying to pull all our lives into order. Tomorrow is St. Nicholas day, of course, and the bishop will be coming and that means I can’t be lying here letting the minutes slip away. Just a few links, this morning. Laura Brown is blogging through Advent. Here are parts one and two. And so is... Read more
It’s been a long week of politics and theology around here. Time for some lighter, calmer fare. One For those of you who don’t yet have a copy of Let Us Keep the Feast, I can’t recommend it enough at the beginning of this new liturgical year. Advent isn’t so old yet that you won’t enjoy it’s bountiful riches. By the same publisher, and having nothing to do with the church year, but since it came out this week, there... Read more
I should probably begin to spend less time on Twitter, even though it is one place, in the absence of a tv, a person can sort of find out news. I was just collapsing into bed last night and learned of yet another shooting. But before I could read anything about it, I was confronted with the New York Daily News cover for today. The headline reads, “God Isn’t Fixing This.” Within a couple of seconds I had discovered, I... Read more
I haven’t gotten all roiled up, at least not here, about the Colorado Planned Parenthood shooting last week, other than to notice it in my own Saturday Links. I am constantly irritated by how a news story takes a fixed form before all the information is in, and then everyone has to react to that fixed form, even if it’s not true in fact or reality. It’s a clever way for one person to set another person back on her... Read more
I’m not particularly up to date on pop culture/entertainment news. I only know the little that can be gleaned from ten minutes of evening internet scrolling and then coffee hour conversations percolating here and there. Well, and my Tuesday Tea Time for which I try to be up to date on YouTube clips. In the old days my Tuesday Tea Time and I would have talked knowingly about books, but now it’s all Adele and and, well, leave me alone,... Read more
Happened to spend a pleasant hour with a friend at a tiny Cuban dive a few weeks ago, gasping over the glory of meat and cheese carefully coffin-ed in dough. My mouth full, I flailed my arms wildly, listing off to her all the people I know, laboriously enumerating each person’s Main Thing. ‘You know how everybody has a thing,’ I said. ‘You’re chatting along and then suddenly you’re talking about their Main Thing–Music, Christian Education, What Did I Just... Read more
There’s a very pretty and depressing Christmas Carol that we have sometimes sung on Christmas Eve during communion after all the children have been extracted from their costumes and the buzz and excitement have died ever so slightly down. It’s all about Mary holding Jesus and feeling sad as she looks ahead to the crucifixion. She holds his tiny hands and imagines nails being driven into them. If you ever feel like a good irrational cry, this is the carol... Read more
Preventing Grace
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