Singing Along the Journey

Travel

Unexpected gifts…

Last morning mountain walk for now. So different than our last visit and so very grateful for all the beauty. And last night the sky lived up to its dark skies reputation...crystal clear and bright star shine everywhere...have to leave but can't wait to come back. Thank you #pandemictimes for forcing me to look at all the gifts that are available closer to home. The state of Virginia is amazing. #pandemicpractice #notcapitolhill #everymorningiseastermorning
Read More

Fire, the Great Creator

There's been a lot of talk about fire lately.  First, today is the feast of Pentecost, the day when, in the tradition of the church, the period of transition between the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ and the moment when the Holy Spirit descended as the flame of ministry and carried the apostles into the world to tell what we Christians call the Good News, or the Gospel (Acts 2:1-21). And then there were the great words from Presiding Bishop Curry's wedding sermon heard round the world, quoting the work of Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin when he said:  "Fire makes that possible, and de Chardin said fire was one…
Read More

Giant fishes and soldiers…oh my!

I see at least ten stories a week like this – the “just discovered at…” kind of archaeological announcement. I fell in love with the lure of the ancient long ago, starting my academic career as a history major and ending it with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies. This story was different, though. There, on my screen, was an image made of tiny little pieces of beautiful glass, an image like I had never seen before, with a headline that shouted “Earliest Mosaic of Jonah and the Whale Found in Galilee Synagogue (The Times of Israel, July 7, 2017). This is my kind of click-bait. And so I read…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Fifteen years, remembrance, and gratitude

This day is never an easy one for me.  I, like anyone who lived in Washington DC, or New York, or a little town in Pennsylvania called Shanksville, have my personal story to tell about that day.  That, however, is not the story I want to tell today as we remember the events of 15 years ago.  I want to tell you the story of a man whose name I do not know, a man working in a TSA line, in Columbus, OH. I was in Ohio (really in Gambier not in Columbus, but that was the nearest airport) to participate in the Kenyon Institute's Beyond Walls spiritual writing program.…
Read More

Goodbye, woods and water….

Take a deep breath, I tell myself.  Breathe in, the scent of those Jeffrey pines is the smell of this place.  Listen to the sharp song of those stellar jays as they hop everywhere; remember their unusual blue coloring.  Listen, look, feel -- remember it all, because you do not know when or if you will ever return.  You see,  I have a long day of anonymous travel ahead of me, but first, I have a couple of hours to sit and savor the peace and quiet of this forest on the beautiful blue lake in the Sierras before I  join the moving masses driving west and south on I-80…
Read More

Trees and Taize

I'm into the third week of my program here at San Francisco Theological Seminary and I am thinking about many things...but most of all, trees and Taize.  Just indulge me, for a moment. As a traveler, I always do the best I can to experience the place I am visiting, so of course I have devoted any spare moment to exploration.  I spent hours in the beautiful Sonoma Valley and the Russian River Valley and last weekend I visited the Sonoma coast;  but what touches my imagination and my spirit most is, well, the trees. Redwoods, that is. The big trees.  I first visited Muir Woods 15 years ago and…
Read More

Fog. Literal fog. Well, maybe…

It is Monday morning and as I walk to breakfast with my eyes firmly fixed on the dark-sky-slipping-toward-light ahead of me, I am thinking about fog.  I am, after all, in the Bay area and there is plenty of it.  I'm actively resisting pulling out my phone to try and capture what I see all around me, because I know it cannot be done.  What I see defies at least my current level of photographic talent -- the subtle puffs of white, still clinging to the hill tops and valleys as the sun, painting its tell-tale deep pink stripes across the still grey-black sky in its attempt to chase those…
Read More

Onward…

Having spent most of my years as a communicator of some kind, words are important to me.  If you combine that life experience with a good ten years spent in a worship community in which the song that lead into prayer during worship went like this, Our thoughts our prayers And we are always praying Our thoughts our prayers Take charge of what you are saying Seek a higher consciousness A state of peacefulness And know that God is always there. And every thought becomes a prayer. and you have, well me -- someone who over and over again examines the use of words that many people assume have a…
Read More

That toddlin’ town…

That is the song I always hear when I arrive in Chicago...the old one, not anything new and trendy.  But that seems fitting since my ties to this great city are long and deep and unrequited, ties that need to be revisited from time to time for reasons that are unclear to most who know me. What is it about Chicago?  Well, many years ago, years before I began to travel the world with frequency and ease, I packed a few belongings and a friend into a car and drove here to see the Tutankhamen exhibition at the vast Field Museum of Natural History.  I had never seen  a city…
Read More

Unexpected gifts…

Last morning mountain walk for now. So different than our last visit and so very grateful for all the beauty. And last night the sky lived up to its dark skies reputation...crystal clear and bright star shine everywhere...have to leave but can't wait to come back. Thank you #pandemictimes for forcing me to look at all the gifts that are available closer to home. The state of Virginia is amazing. #pandemicpractice #notcapitolhill #everymorningiseastermorning
Read More

Fire, the Great Creator

There's been a lot of talk about fire lately.  First, today is the feast of Pentecost, the day when, in the tradition of the church, the period of transition between the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ and the moment when the Holy Spirit descended as the flame of ministry and carried the apostles into the world to tell what we Christians call the Good News, or the Gospel (Acts 2:1-21). And then there were the great words from Presiding Bishop Curry's wedding sermon heard round the world, quoting the work of Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin when he said:  "Fire makes that possible, and de Chardin said fire was one…
Read More

Giant fishes and soldiers…oh my!

I see at least ten stories a week like this – the “just discovered at…” kind of archaeological announcement. I fell in love with the lure of the ancient long ago, starting my academic career as a history major and ending it with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies. This story was different, though. There, on my screen, was an image made of tiny little pieces of beautiful glass, an image like I had never seen before, with a headline that shouted “Earliest Mosaic of Jonah and the Whale Found in Galilee Synagogue (The Times of Israel, July 7, 2017). This is my kind of click-bait. And so I read…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Fifteen years, remembrance, and gratitude

This day is never an easy one for me.  I, like anyone who lived in Washington DC, or New York, or a little town in Pennsylvania called Shanksville, have my personal story to tell about that day.  That, however, is not the story I want to tell today as we remember the events of 15 years ago.  I want to tell you the story of a man whose name I do not know, a man working in a TSA line, in Columbus, OH. I was in Ohio (really in Gambier not in Columbus, but that was the nearest airport) to participate in the Kenyon Institute's Beyond Walls spiritual writing program.…
Read More

Goodbye, woods and water….

Take a deep breath, I tell myself.  Breathe in, the scent of those Jeffrey pines is the smell of this place.  Listen to the sharp song of those stellar jays as they hop everywhere; remember their unusual blue coloring.  Listen, look, feel -- remember it all, because you do not know when or if you will ever return.  You see,  I have a long day of anonymous travel ahead of me, but first, I have a couple of hours to sit and savor the peace and quiet of this forest on the beautiful blue lake in the Sierras before I  join the moving masses driving west and south on I-80…
Read More

Trees and Taize

I'm into the third week of my program here at San Francisco Theological Seminary and I am thinking about many things...but most of all, trees and Taize.  Just indulge me, for a moment. As a traveler, I always do the best I can to experience the place I am visiting, so of course I have devoted any spare moment to exploration.  I spent hours in the beautiful Sonoma Valley and the Russian River Valley and last weekend I visited the Sonoma coast;  but what touches my imagination and my spirit most is, well, the trees. Redwoods, that is. The big trees.  I first visited Muir Woods 15 years ago and…
Read More

Fog. Literal fog. Well, maybe…

It is Monday morning and as I walk to breakfast with my eyes firmly fixed on the dark-sky-slipping-toward-light ahead of me, I am thinking about fog.  I am, after all, in the Bay area and there is plenty of it.  I'm actively resisting pulling out my phone to try and capture what I see all around me, because I know it cannot be done.  What I see defies at least my current level of photographic talent -- the subtle puffs of white, still clinging to the hill tops and valleys as the sun, painting its tell-tale deep pink stripes across the still grey-black sky in its attempt to chase those…
Read More

Onward…

Having spent most of my years as a communicator of some kind, words are important to me.  If you combine that life experience with a good ten years spent in a worship community in which the song that lead into prayer during worship went like this, Our thoughts our prayers And we are always praying Our thoughts our prayers Take charge of what you are saying Seek a higher consciousness A state of peacefulness And know that God is always there. And every thought becomes a prayer. and you have, well me -- someone who over and over again examines the use of words that many people assume have a…
Read More

That toddlin’ town…

That is the song I always hear when I arrive in Chicago...the old one, not anything new and trendy.  But that seems fitting since my ties to this great city are long and deep and unrequited, ties that need to be revisited from time to time for reasons that are unclear to most who know me. What is it about Chicago?  Well, many years ago, years before I began to travel the world with frequency and ease, I packed a few belongings and a friend into a car and drove here to see the Tutankhamen exhibition at the vast Field Museum of Natural History.  I had never seen  a city…
Read More

Unexpected gifts…

Last morning mountain walk for now. So different than our last visit and so very grateful for all the beauty. And last night the sky lived up to its dark skies reputation...crystal clear and bright star shine everywhere...have to leave but can't wait to come back. Thank you #pandemictimes for forcing me to look at all the gifts that are available closer to home. The state of Virginia is amazing. #pandemicpractice #notcapitolhill #everymorningiseastermorning
Read More

Fire, the Great Creator

There's been a lot of talk about fire lately.  First, today is the feast of Pentecost, the day when, in the tradition of the church, the period of transition between the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ and the moment when the Holy Spirit descended as the flame of ministry and carried the apostles into the world to tell what we Christians call the Good News, or the Gospel (Acts 2:1-21). And then there were the great words from Presiding Bishop Curry's wedding sermon heard round the world, quoting the work of Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin when he said:  "Fire makes that possible, and de Chardin said fire was one…
Read More

Giant fishes and soldiers…oh my!

I see at least ten stories a week like this – the “just discovered at…” kind of archaeological announcement. I fell in love with the lure of the ancient long ago, starting my academic career as a history major and ending it with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies. This story was different, though. There, on my screen, was an image made of tiny little pieces of beautiful glass, an image like I had never seen before, with a headline that shouted “Earliest Mosaic of Jonah and the Whale Found in Galilee Synagogue (The Times of Israel, July 7, 2017). This is my kind of click-bait. And so I read…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Fifteen years, remembrance, and gratitude

This day is never an easy one for me.  I, like anyone who lived in Washington DC, or New York, or a little town in Pennsylvania called Shanksville, have my personal story to tell about that day.  That, however, is not the story I want to tell today as we remember the events of 15 years ago.  I want to tell you the story of a man whose name I do not know, a man working in a TSA line, in Columbus, OH. I was in Ohio (really in Gambier not in Columbus, but that was the nearest airport) to participate in the Kenyon Institute's Beyond Walls spiritual writing program.…
Read More

Goodbye, woods and water….

Take a deep breath, I tell myself.  Breathe in, the scent of those Jeffrey pines is the smell of this place.  Listen to the sharp song of those stellar jays as they hop everywhere; remember their unusual blue coloring.  Listen, look, feel -- remember it all, because you do not know when or if you will ever return.  You see,  I have a long day of anonymous travel ahead of me, but first, I have a couple of hours to sit and savor the peace and quiet of this forest on the beautiful blue lake in the Sierras before I  join the moving masses driving west and south on I-80…
Read More

Trees and Taize

I'm into the third week of my program here at San Francisco Theological Seminary and I am thinking about many things...but most of all, trees and Taize.  Just indulge me, for a moment. As a traveler, I always do the best I can to experience the place I am visiting, so of course I have devoted any spare moment to exploration.  I spent hours in the beautiful Sonoma Valley and the Russian River Valley and last weekend I visited the Sonoma coast;  but what touches my imagination and my spirit most is, well, the trees. Redwoods, that is. The big trees.  I first visited Muir Woods 15 years ago and…
Read More

Fog. Literal fog. Well, maybe…

It is Monday morning and as I walk to breakfast with my eyes firmly fixed on the dark-sky-slipping-toward-light ahead of me, I am thinking about fog.  I am, after all, in the Bay area and there is plenty of it.  I'm actively resisting pulling out my phone to try and capture what I see all around me, because I know it cannot be done.  What I see defies at least my current level of photographic talent -- the subtle puffs of white, still clinging to the hill tops and valleys as the sun, painting its tell-tale deep pink stripes across the still grey-black sky in its attempt to chase those…
Read More

Onward…

Having spent most of my years as a communicator of some kind, words are important to me.  If you combine that life experience with a good ten years spent in a worship community in which the song that lead into prayer during worship went like this, Our thoughts our prayers And we are always praying Our thoughts our prayers Take charge of what you are saying Seek a higher consciousness A state of peacefulness And know that God is always there. And every thought becomes a prayer. and you have, well me -- someone who over and over again examines the use of words that many people assume have a…
Read More

That toddlin’ town…

That is the song I always hear when I arrive in Chicago...the old one, not anything new and trendy.  But that seems fitting since my ties to this great city are long and deep and unrequited, ties that need to be revisited from time to time for reasons that are unclear to most who know me. What is it about Chicago?  Well, many years ago, years before I began to travel the world with frequency and ease, I packed a few belongings and a friend into a car and drove here to see the Tutankhamen exhibition at the vast Field Museum of Natural History.  I had never seen  a city…
Read More

Unexpected gifts…

Last morning mountain walk for now. So different than our last visit and so very grateful for all the beauty. And last night the sky lived up to its dark skies reputation...crystal clear and bright star shine everywhere...have to leave but can't wait to come back. Thank you #pandemictimes for forcing me to look at all the gifts that are available closer to home. The state of Virginia is amazing. #pandemicpractice #notcapitolhill #everymorningiseastermorning
Read More

Fire, the Great Creator

There's been a lot of talk about fire lately.  First, today is the feast of Pentecost, the day when, in the tradition of the church, the period of transition between the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ and the moment when the Holy Spirit descended as the flame of ministry and carried the apostles into the world to tell what we Christians call the Good News, or the Gospel (Acts 2:1-21). And then there were the great words from Presiding Bishop Curry's wedding sermon heard round the world, quoting the work of Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin when he said:  "Fire makes that possible, and de Chardin said fire was one…
Read More

Giant fishes and soldiers…oh my!

I see at least ten stories a week like this – the “just discovered at…” kind of archaeological announcement. I fell in love with the lure of the ancient long ago, starting my academic career as a history major and ending it with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies. This story was different, though. There, on my screen, was an image made of tiny little pieces of beautiful glass, an image like I had never seen before, with a headline that shouted “Earliest Mosaic of Jonah and the Whale Found in Galilee Synagogue (The Times of Israel, July 7, 2017). This is my kind of click-bait. And so I read…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Fifteen years, remembrance, and gratitude

This day is never an easy one for me.  I, like anyone who lived in Washington DC, or New York, or a little town in Pennsylvania called Shanksville, have my personal story to tell about that day.  That, however, is not the story I want to tell today as we remember the events of 15 years ago.  I want to tell you the story of a man whose name I do not know, a man working in a TSA line, in Columbus, OH. I was in Ohio (really in Gambier not in Columbus, but that was the nearest airport) to participate in the Kenyon Institute's Beyond Walls spiritual writing program.…
Read More

Goodbye, woods and water….

Take a deep breath, I tell myself.  Breathe in, the scent of those Jeffrey pines is the smell of this place.  Listen to the sharp song of those stellar jays as they hop everywhere; remember their unusual blue coloring.  Listen, look, feel -- remember it all, because you do not know when or if you will ever return.  You see,  I have a long day of anonymous travel ahead of me, but first, I have a couple of hours to sit and savor the peace and quiet of this forest on the beautiful blue lake in the Sierras before I  join the moving masses driving west and south on I-80…
Read More

Trees and Taize

I'm into the third week of my program here at San Francisco Theological Seminary and I am thinking about many things...but most of all, trees and Taize.  Just indulge me, for a moment. As a traveler, I always do the best I can to experience the place I am visiting, so of course I have devoted any spare moment to exploration.  I spent hours in the beautiful Sonoma Valley and the Russian River Valley and last weekend I visited the Sonoma coast;  but what touches my imagination and my spirit most is, well, the trees. Redwoods, that is. The big trees.  I first visited Muir Woods 15 years ago and…
Read More

Fog. Literal fog. Well, maybe…

It is Monday morning and as I walk to breakfast with my eyes firmly fixed on the dark-sky-slipping-toward-light ahead of me, I am thinking about fog.  I am, after all, in the Bay area and there is plenty of it.  I'm actively resisting pulling out my phone to try and capture what I see all around me, because I know it cannot be done.  What I see defies at least my current level of photographic talent -- the subtle puffs of white, still clinging to the hill tops and valleys as the sun, painting its tell-tale deep pink stripes across the still grey-black sky in its attempt to chase those…
Read More

Onward…

Having spent most of my years as a communicator of some kind, words are important to me.  If you combine that life experience with a good ten years spent in a worship community in which the song that lead into prayer during worship went like this, Our thoughts our prayers And we are always praying Our thoughts our prayers Take charge of what you are saying Seek a higher consciousness A state of peacefulness And know that God is always there. And every thought becomes a prayer. and you have, well me -- someone who over and over again examines the use of words that many people assume have a…
Read More

That toddlin’ town…

That is the song I always hear when I arrive in Chicago...the old one, not anything new and trendy.  But that seems fitting since my ties to this great city are long and deep and unrequited, ties that need to be revisited from time to time for reasons that are unclear to most who know me. What is it about Chicago?  Well, many years ago, years before I began to travel the world with frequency and ease, I packed a few belongings and a friend into a car and drove here to see the Tutankhamen exhibition at the vast Field Museum of Natural History.  I had never seen  a city…
Read More

Unexpected gifts…

Last morning mountain walk for now. So different than our last visit and so very grateful for all the beauty. And last night the sky lived up to its dark skies reputation...crystal clear and bright star shine everywhere...have to leave but can't wait to come back. Thank you #pandemictimes for forcing me to look at all the gifts that are available closer to home. The state of Virginia is amazing. #pandemicpractice #notcapitolhill #everymorningiseastermorning
Read More

Fire, the Great Creator

There's been a lot of talk about fire lately.  First, today is the feast of Pentecost, the day when, in the tradition of the church, the period of transition between the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ and the moment when the Holy Spirit descended as the flame of ministry and carried the apostles into the world to tell what we Christians call the Good News, or the Gospel (Acts 2:1-21). And then there were the great words from Presiding Bishop Curry's wedding sermon heard round the world, quoting the work of Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin when he said:  "Fire makes that possible, and de Chardin said fire was one…
Read More

Giant fishes and soldiers…oh my!

I see at least ten stories a week like this – the “just discovered at…” kind of archaeological announcement. I fell in love with the lure of the ancient long ago, starting my academic career as a history major and ending it with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies. This story was different, though. There, on my screen, was an image made of tiny little pieces of beautiful glass, an image like I had never seen before, with a headline that shouted “Earliest Mosaic of Jonah and the Whale Found in Galilee Synagogue (The Times of Israel, July 7, 2017). This is my kind of click-bait. And so I read…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Fifteen years, remembrance, and gratitude

This day is never an easy one for me.  I, like anyone who lived in Washington DC, or New York, or a little town in Pennsylvania called Shanksville, have my personal story to tell about that day.  That, however, is not the story I want to tell today as we remember the events of 15 years ago.  I want to tell you the story of a man whose name I do not know, a man working in a TSA line, in Columbus, OH. I was in Ohio (really in Gambier not in Columbus, but that was the nearest airport) to participate in the Kenyon Institute's Beyond Walls spiritual writing program.…
Read More

Goodbye, woods and water….

Take a deep breath, I tell myself.  Breathe in, the scent of those Jeffrey pines is the smell of this place.  Listen to the sharp song of those stellar jays as they hop everywhere; remember their unusual blue coloring.  Listen, look, feel -- remember it all, because you do not know when or if you will ever return.  You see,  I have a long day of anonymous travel ahead of me, but first, I have a couple of hours to sit and savor the peace and quiet of this forest on the beautiful blue lake in the Sierras before I  join the moving masses driving west and south on I-80…
Read More

Trees and Taize

I'm into the third week of my program here at San Francisco Theological Seminary and I am thinking about many things...but most of all, trees and Taize.  Just indulge me, for a moment. As a traveler, I always do the best I can to experience the place I am visiting, so of course I have devoted any spare moment to exploration.  I spent hours in the beautiful Sonoma Valley and the Russian River Valley and last weekend I visited the Sonoma coast;  but what touches my imagination and my spirit most is, well, the trees. Redwoods, that is. The big trees.  I first visited Muir Woods 15 years ago and…
Read More

Fog. Literal fog. Well, maybe…

It is Monday morning and as I walk to breakfast with my eyes firmly fixed on the dark-sky-slipping-toward-light ahead of me, I am thinking about fog.  I am, after all, in the Bay area and there is plenty of it.  I'm actively resisting pulling out my phone to try and capture what I see all around me, because I know it cannot be done.  What I see defies at least my current level of photographic talent -- the subtle puffs of white, still clinging to the hill tops and valleys as the sun, painting its tell-tale deep pink stripes across the still grey-black sky in its attempt to chase those…
Read More

Onward…

Having spent most of my years as a communicator of some kind, words are important to me.  If you combine that life experience with a good ten years spent in a worship community in which the song that lead into prayer during worship went like this, Our thoughts our prayers And we are always praying Our thoughts our prayers Take charge of what you are saying Seek a higher consciousness A state of peacefulness And know that God is always there. And every thought becomes a prayer. and you have, well me -- someone who over and over again examines the use of words that many people assume have a…
Read More

That toddlin’ town…

That is the song I always hear when I arrive in Chicago...the old one, not anything new and trendy.  But that seems fitting since my ties to this great city are long and deep and unrequited, ties that need to be revisited from time to time for reasons that are unclear to most who know me. What is it about Chicago?  Well, many years ago, years before I began to travel the world with frequency and ease, I packed a few belongings and a friend into a car and drove here to see the Tutankhamen exhibition at the vast Field Museum of Natural History.  I had never seen  a city…
Read More

Unexpected gifts…

Last morning mountain walk for now. So different than our last visit and so very grateful for all the beauty. And last night the sky lived up to its dark skies reputation...crystal clear and bright star shine everywhere...have to leave but can't wait to come back. Thank you #pandemictimes for forcing me to look at all the gifts that are available closer to home. The state of Virginia is amazing. #pandemicpractice #notcapitolhill #everymorningiseastermorning
Read More

Fire, the Great Creator

There's been a lot of talk about fire lately.  First, today is the feast of Pentecost, the day when, in the tradition of the church, the period of transition between the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ and the moment when the Holy Spirit descended as the flame of ministry and carried the apostles into the world to tell what we Christians call the Good News, or the Gospel (Acts 2:1-21). And then there were the great words from Presiding Bishop Curry's wedding sermon heard round the world, quoting the work of Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin when he said:  "Fire makes that possible, and de Chardin said fire was one…
Read More

Giant fishes and soldiers…oh my!

I see at least ten stories a week like this – the “just discovered at…” kind of archaeological announcement. I fell in love with the lure of the ancient long ago, starting my academic career as a history major and ending it with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies. This story was different, though. There, on my screen, was an image made of tiny little pieces of beautiful glass, an image like I had never seen before, with a headline that shouted “Earliest Mosaic of Jonah and the Whale Found in Galilee Synagogue (The Times of Israel, July 7, 2017). This is my kind of click-bait. And so I read…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Fifteen years, remembrance, and gratitude

This day is never an easy one for me.  I, like anyone who lived in Washington DC, or New York, or a little town in Pennsylvania called Shanksville, have my personal story to tell about that day.  That, however, is not the story I want to tell today as we remember the events of 15 years ago.  I want to tell you the story of a man whose name I do not know, a man working in a TSA line, in Columbus, OH. I was in Ohio (really in Gambier not in Columbus, but that was the nearest airport) to participate in the Kenyon Institute's Beyond Walls spiritual writing program.…
Read More

Goodbye, woods and water….

Take a deep breath, I tell myself.  Breathe in, the scent of those Jeffrey pines is the smell of this place.  Listen to the sharp song of those stellar jays as they hop everywhere; remember their unusual blue coloring.  Listen, look, feel -- remember it all, because you do not know when or if you will ever return.  You see,  I have a long day of anonymous travel ahead of me, but first, I have a couple of hours to sit and savor the peace and quiet of this forest on the beautiful blue lake in the Sierras before I  join the moving masses driving west and south on I-80…
Read More

Trees and Taize

I'm into the third week of my program here at San Francisco Theological Seminary and I am thinking about many things...but most of all, trees and Taize.  Just indulge me, for a moment. As a traveler, I always do the best I can to experience the place I am visiting, so of course I have devoted any spare moment to exploration.  I spent hours in the beautiful Sonoma Valley and the Russian River Valley and last weekend I visited the Sonoma coast;  but what touches my imagination and my spirit most is, well, the trees. Redwoods, that is. The big trees.  I first visited Muir Woods 15 years ago and…
Read More

Fog. Literal fog. Well, maybe…

It is Monday morning and as I walk to breakfast with my eyes firmly fixed on the dark-sky-slipping-toward-light ahead of me, I am thinking about fog.  I am, after all, in the Bay area and there is plenty of it.  I'm actively resisting pulling out my phone to try and capture what I see all around me, because I know it cannot be done.  What I see defies at least my current level of photographic talent -- the subtle puffs of white, still clinging to the hill tops and valleys as the sun, painting its tell-tale deep pink stripes across the still grey-black sky in its attempt to chase those…
Read More

Onward…

Having spent most of my years as a communicator of some kind, words are important to me.  If you combine that life experience with a good ten years spent in a worship community in which the song that lead into prayer during worship went like this, Our thoughts our prayers And we are always praying Our thoughts our prayers Take charge of what you are saying Seek a higher consciousness A state of peacefulness And know that God is always there. And every thought becomes a prayer. and you have, well me -- someone who over and over again examines the use of words that many people assume have a…
Read More

That toddlin’ town…

That is the song I always hear when I arrive in Chicago...the old one, not anything new and trendy.  But that seems fitting since my ties to this great city are long and deep and unrequited, ties that need to be revisited from time to time for reasons that are unclear to most who know me. What is it about Chicago?  Well, many years ago, years before I began to travel the world with frequency and ease, I packed a few belongings and a friend into a car and drove here to see the Tutankhamen exhibition at the vast Field Museum of Natural History.  I had never seen  a city…
Read More

Unexpected gifts…

Last morning mountain walk for now. So different than our last visit and so very grateful for all the beauty. And last night the sky lived up to its dark skies reputation...crystal clear and bright star shine everywhere...have to leave but can't wait to come back. Thank you #pandemictimes for forcing me to look at all the gifts that are available closer to home. The state of Virginia is amazing. #pandemicpractice #notcapitolhill #everymorningiseastermorning
Read More

Fire, the Great Creator

There's been a lot of talk about fire lately.  First, today is the feast of Pentecost, the day when, in the tradition of the church, the period of transition between the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ and the moment when the Holy Spirit descended as the flame of ministry and carried the apostles into the world to tell what we Christians call the Good News, or the Gospel (Acts 2:1-21). And then there were the great words from Presiding Bishop Curry's wedding sermon heard round the world, quoting the work of Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin when he said:  "Fire makes that possible, and de Chardin said fire was one…
Read More

Giant fishes and soldiers…oh my!

I see at least ten stories a week like this – the “just discovered at…” kind of archaeological announcement. I fell in love with the lure of the ancient long ago, starting my academic career as a history major and ending it with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies. This story was different, though. There, on my screen, was an image made of tiny little pieces of beautiful glass, an image like I had never seen before, with a headline that shouted “Earliest Mosaic of Jonah and the Whale Found in Galilee Synagogue (The Times of Israel, July 7, 2017). This is my kind of click-bait. And so I read…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Fifteen years, remembrance, and gratitude

This day is never an easy one for me.  I, like anyone who lived in Washington DC, or New York, or a little town in Pennsylvania called Shanksville, have my personal story to tell about that day.  That, however, is not the story I want to tell today as we remember the events of 15 years ago.  I want to tell you the story of a man whose name I do not know, a man working in a TSA line, in Columbus, OH. I was in Ohio (really in Gambier not in Columbus, but that was the nearest airport) to participate in the Kenyon Institute's Beyond Walls spiritual writing program.…
Read More

Goodbye, woods and water….

Take a deep breath, I tell myself.  Breathe in, the scent of those Jeffrey pines is the smell of this place.  Listen to the sharp song of those stellar jays as they hop everywhere; remember their unusual blue coloring.  Listen, look, feel -- remember it all, because you do not know when or if you will ever return.  You see,  I have a long day of anonymous travel ahead of me, but first, I have a couple of hours to sit and savor the peace and quiet of this forest on the beautiful blue lake in the Sierras before I  join the moving masses driving west and south on I-80…
Read More

Trees and Taize

I'm into the third week of my program here at San Francisco Theological Seminary and I am thinking about many things...but most of all, trees and Taize.  Just indulge me, for a moment. As a traveler, I always do the best I can to experience the place I am visiting, so of course I have devoted any spare moment to exploration.  I spent hours in the beautiful Sonoma Valley and the Russian River Valley and last weekend I visited the Sonoma coast;  but what touches my imagination and my spirit most is, well, the trees. Redwoods, that is. The big trees.  I first visited Muir Woods 15 years ago and…
Read More

Fog. Literal fog. Well, maybe…

It is Monday morning and as I walk to breakfast with my eyes firmly fixed on the dark-sky-slipping-toward-light ahead of me, I am thinking about fog.  I am, after all, in the Bay area and there is plenty of it.  I'm actively resisting pulling out my phone to try and capture what I see all around me, because I know it cannot be done.  What I see defies at least my current level of photographic talent -- the subtle puffs of white, still clinging to the hill tops and valleys as the sun, painting its tell-tale deep pink stripes across the still grey-black sky in its attempt to chase those…
Read More

Onward…

Having spent most of my years as a communicator of some kind, words are important to me.  If you combine that life experience with a good ten years spent in a worship community in which the song that lead into prayer during worship went like this, Our thoughts our prayers And we are always praying Our thoughts our prayers Take charge of what you are saying Seek a higher consciousness A state of peacefulness And know that God is always there. And every thought becomes a prayer. and you have, well me -- someone who over and over again examines the use of words that many people assume have a…
Read More

That toddlin’ town…

That is the song I always hear when I arrive in Chicago...the old one, not anything new and trendy.  But that seems fitting since my ties to this great city are long and deep and unrequited, ties that need to be revisited from time to time for reasons that are unclear to most who know me. What is it about Chicago?  Well, many years ago, years before I began to travel the world with frequency and ease, I packed a few belongings and a friend into a car and drove here to see the Tutankhamen exhibition at the vast Field Museum of Natural History.  I had never seen  a city…
Read More

Unexpected gifts…

Last morning mountain walk for now. So different than our last visit and so very grateful for all the beauty. And last night the sky lived up to its dark skies reputation...crystal clear and bright star shine everywhere...have to leave but can't wait to come back. Thank you #pandemictimes for forcing me to look at all the gifts that are available closer to home. The state of Virginia is amazing. #pandemicpractice #notcapitolhill #everymorningiseastermorning
Read More

Fire, the Great Creator

There's been a lot of talk about fire lately.  First, today is the feast of Pentecost, the day when, in the tradition of the church, the period of transition between the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ and the moment when the Holy Spirit descended as the flame of ministry and carried the apostles into the world to tell what we Christians call the Good News, or the Gospel (Acts 2:1-21). And then there were the great words from Presiding Bishop Curry's wedding sermon heard round the world, quoting the work of Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin when he said:  "Fire makes that possible, and de Chardin said fire was one…
Read More

Giant fishes and soldiers…oh my!

I see at least ten stories a week like this – the “just discovered at…” kind of archaeological announcement. I fell in love with the lure of the ancient long ago, starting my academic career as a history major and ending it with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies. This story was different, though. There, on my screen, was an image made of tiny little pieces of beautiful glass, an image like I had never seen before, with a headline that shouted “Earliest Mosaic of Jonah and the Whale Found in Galilee Synagogue (The Times of Israel, July 7, 2017). This is my kind of click-bait. And so I read…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Fifteen years, remembrance, and gratitude

This day is never an easy one for me.  I, like anyone who lived in Washington DC, or New York, or a little town in Pennsylvania called Shanksville, have my personal story to tell about that day.  That, however, is not the story I want to tell today as we remember the events of 15 years ago.  I want to tell you the story of a man whose name I do not know, a man working in a TSA line, in Columbus, OH. I was in Ohio (really in Gambier not in Columbus, but that was the nearest airport) to participate in the Kenyon Institute's Beyond Walls spiritual writing program.…
Read More

Goodbye, woods and water….

Take a deep breath, I tell myself.  Breathe in, the scent of those Jeffrey pines is the smell of this place.  Listen to the sharp song of those stellar jays as they hop everywhere; remember their unusual blue coloring.  Listen, look, feel -- remember it all, because you do not know when or if you will ever return.  You see,  I have a long day of anonymous travel ahead of me, but first, I have a couple of hours to sit and savor the peace and quiet of this forest on the beautiful blue lake in the Sierras before I  join the moving masses driving west and south on I-80…
Read More

Trees and Taize

I'm into the third week of my program here at San Francisco Theological Seminary and I am thinking about many things...but most of all, trees and Taize.  Just indulge me, for a moment. As a traveler, I always do the best I can to experience the place I am visiting, so of course I have devoted any spare moment to exploration.  I spent hours in the beautiful Sonoma Valley and the Russian River Valley and last weekend I visited the Sonoma coast;  but what touches my imagination and my spirit most is, well, the trees. Redwoods, that is. The big trees.  I first visited Muir Woods 15 years ago and…
Read More

Fog. Literal fog. Well, maybe…

It is Monday morning and as I walk to breakfast with my eyes firmly fixed on the dark-sky-slipping-toward-light ahead of me, I am thinking about fog.  I am, after all, in the Bay area and there is plenty of it.  I'm actively resisting pulling out my phone to try and capture what I see all around me, because I know it cannot be done.  What I see defies at least my current level of photographic talent -- the subtle puffs of white, still clinging to the hill tops and valleys as the sun, painting its tell-tale deep pink stripes across the still grey-black sky in its attempt to chase those…
Read More

Onward…

Having spent most of my years as a communicator of some kind, words are important to me.  If you combine that life experience with a good ten years spent in a worship community in which the song that lead into prayer during worship went like this, Our thoughts our prayers And we are always praying Our thoughts our prayers Take charge of what you are saying Seek a higher consciousness A state of peacefulness And know that God is always there. And every thought becomes a prayer. and you have, well me -- someone who over and over again examines the use of words that many people assume have a…
Read More

That toddlin’ town…

That is the song I always hear when I arrive in Chicago...the old one, not anything new and trendy.  But that seems fitting since my ties to this great city are long and deep and unrequited, ties that need to be revisited from time to time for reasons that are unclear to most who know me. What is it about Chicago?  Well, many years ago, years before I began to travel the world with frequency and ease, I packed a few belongings and a friend into a car and drove here to see the Tutankhamen exhibition at the vast Field Museum of Natural History.  I had never seen  a city…
Read More

Unexpected gifts…

Last morning mountain walk for now. So different than our last visit and so very grateful for all the beauty. And last night the sky lived up to its dark skies reputation...crystal clear and bright star shine everywhere...have to leave but can't wait to come back. Thank you #pandemictimes for forcing me to look at all the gifts that are available closer to home. The state of Virginia is amazing. #pandemicpractice #notcapitolhill #everymorningiseastermorning
Read More

Fire, the Great Creator

There's been a lot of talk about fire lately.  First, today is the feast of Pentecost, the day when, in the tradition of the church, the period of transition between the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ and the moment when the Holy Spirit descended as the flame of ministry and carried the apostles into the world to tell what we Christians call the Good News, or the Gospel (Acts 2:1-21). And then there were the great words from Presiding Bishop Curry's wedding sermon heard round the world, quoting the work of Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin when he said:  "Fire makes that possible, and de Chardin said fire was one…
Read More

Giant fishes and soldiers…oh my!

I see at least ten stories a week like this – the “just discovered at…” kind of archaeological announcement. I fell in love with the lure of the ancient long ago, starting my academic career as a history major and ending it with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies. This story was different, though. There, on my screen, was an image made of tiny little pieces of beautiful glass, an image like I had never seen before, with a headline that shouted “Earliest Mosaic of Jonah and the Whale Found in Galilee Synagogue (The Times of Israel, July 7, 2017). This is my kind of click-bait. And so I read…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Fifteen years, remembrance, and gratitude

This day is never an easy one for me.  I, like anyone who lived in Washington DC, or New York, or a little town in Pennsylvania called Shanksville, have my personal story to tell about that day.  That, however, is not the story I want to tell today as we remember the events of 15 years ago.  I want to tell you the story of a man whose name I do not know, a man working in a TSA line, in Columbus, OH. I was in Ohio (really in Gambier not in Columbus, but that was the nearest airport) to participate in the Kenyon Institute's Beyond Walls spiritual writing program.…
Read More

Goodbye, woods and water….

Take a deep breath, I tell myself.  Breathe in, the scent of those Jeffrey pines is the smell of this place.  Listen to the sharp song of those stellar jays as they hop everywhere; remember their unusual blue coloring.  Listen, look, feel -- remember it all, because you do not know when or if you will ever return.  You see,  I have a long day of anonymous travel ahead of me, but first, I have a couple of hours to sit and savor the peace and quiet of this forest on the beautiful blue lake in the Sierras before I  join the moving masses driving west and south on I-80…
Read More

Trees and Taize

I'm into the third week of my program here at San Francisco Theological Seminary and I am thinking about many things...but most of all, trees and Taize.  Just indulge me, for a moment. As a traveler, I always do the best I can to experience the place I am visiting, so of course I have devoted any spare moment to exploration.  I spent hours in the beautiful Sonoma Valley and the Russian River Valley and last weekend I visited the Sonoma coast;  but what touches my imagination and my spirit most is, well, the trees. Redwoods, that is. The big trees.  I first visited Muir Woods 15 years ago and…
Read More

Fog. Literal fog. Well, maybe…

It is Monday morning and as I walk to breakfast with my eyes firmly fixed on the dark-sky-slipping-toward-light ahead of me, I am thinking about fog.  I am, after all, in the Bay area and there is plenty of it.  I'm actively resisting pulling out my phone to try and capture what I see all around me, because I know it cannot be done.  What I see defies at least my current level of photographic talent -- the subtle puffs of white, still clinging to the hill tops and valleys as the sun, painting its tell-tale deep pink stripes across the still grey-black sky in its attempt to chase those…
Read More

Onward…

Having spent most of my years as a communicator of some kind, words are important to me.  If you combine that life experience with a good ten years spent in a worship community in which the song that lead into prayer during worship went like this, Our thoughts our prayers And we are always praying Our thoughts our prayers Take charge of what you are saying Seek a higher consciousness A state of peacefulness And know that God is always there. And every thought becomes a prayer. and you have, well me -- someone who over and over again examines the use of words that many people assume have a…
Read More

That toddlin’ town…

That is the song I always hear when I arrive in Chicago...the old one, not anything new and trendy.  But that seems fitting since my ties to this great city are long and deep and unrequited, ties that need to be revisited from time to time for reasons that are unclear to most who know me. What is it about Chicago?  Well, many years ago, years before I began to travel the world with frequency and ease, I packed a few belongings and a friend into a car and drove here to see the Tutankhamen exhibition at the vast Field Museum of Natural History.  I had never seen  a city…
Read More

Unexpected gifts…

Last morning mountain walk for now. So different than our last visit and so very grateful for all the beauty. And last night the sky lived up to its dark skies reputation...crystal clear and bright star shine everywhere...have to leave but can't wait to come back. Thank you #pandemictimes for forcing me to look at all the gifts that are available closer to home. The state of Virginia is amazing. #pandemicpractice #notcapitolhill #everymorningiseastermorning
Read More

Fire, the Great Creator

There's been a lot of talk about fire lately.  First, today is the feast of Pentecost, the day when, in the tradition of the church, the period of transition between the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ and the moment when the Holy Spirit descended as the flame of ministry and carried the apostles into the world to tell what we Christians call the Good News, or the Gospel (Acts 2:1-21). And then there were the great words from Presiding Bishop Curry's wedding sermon heard round the world, quoting the work of Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin when he said:  "Fire makes that possible, and de Chardin said fire was one…
Read More

Giant fishes and soldiers…oh my!

I see at least ten stories a week like this – the “just discovered at…” kind of archaeological announcement. I fell in love with the lure of the ancient long ago, starting my academic career as a history major and ending it with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies. This story was different, though. There, on my screen, was an image made of tiny little pieces of beautiful glass, an image like I had never seen before, with a headline that shouted “Earliest Mosaic of Jonah and the Whale Found in Galilee Synagogue (The Times of Israel, July 7, 2017). This is my kind of click-bait. And so I read…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Fifteen years, remembrance, and gratitude

This day is never an easy one for me.  I, like anyone who lived in Washington DC, or New York, or a little town in Pennsylvania called Shanksville, have my personal story to tell about that day.  That, however, is not the story I want to tell today as we remember the events of 15 years ago.  I want to tell you the story of a man whose name I do not know, a man working in a TSA line, in Columbus, OH. I was in Ohio (really in Gambier not in Columbus, but that was the nearest airport) to participate in the Kenyon Institute's Beyond Walls spiritual writing program.…
Read More

Goodbye, woods and water….

Take a deep breath, I tell myself.  Breathe in, the scent of those Jeffrey pines is the smell of this place.  Listen to the sharp song of those stellar jays as they hop everywhere; remember their unusual blue coloring.  Listen, look, feel -- remember it all, because you do not know when or if you will ever return.  You see,  I have a long day of anonymous travel ahead of me, but first, I have a couple of hours to sit and savor the peace and quiet of this forest on the beautiful blue lake in the Sierras before I  join the moving masses driving west and south on I-80…
Read More

Trees and Taize

I'm into the third week of my program here at San Francisco Theological Seminary and I am thinking about many things...but most of all, trees and Taize.  Just indulge me, for a moment. As a traveler, I always do the best I can to experience the place I am visiting, so of course I have devoted any spare moment to exploration.  I spent hours in the beautiful Sonoma Valley and the Russian River Valley and last weekend I visited the Sonoma coast;  but what touches my imagination and my spirit most is, well, the trees. Redwoods, that is. The big trees.  I first visited Muir Woods 15 years ago and…
Read More

Fog. Literal fog. Well, maybe…

It is Monday morning and as I walk to breakfast with my eyes firmly fixed on the dark-sky-slipping-toward-light ahead of me, I am thinking about fog.  I am, after all, in the Bay area and there is plenty of it.  I'm actively resisting pulling out my phone to try and capture what I see all around me, because I know it cannot be done.  What I see defies at least my current level of photographic talent -- the subtle puffs of white, still clinging to the hill tops and valleys as the sun, painting its tell-tale deep pink stripes across the still grey-black sky in its attempt to chase those…
Read More

Onward…

Having spent most of my years as a communicator of some kind, words are important to me.  If you combine that life experience with a good ten years spent in a worship community in which the song that lead into prayer during worship went like this, Our thoughts our prayers And we are always praying Our thoughts our prayers Take charge of what you are saying Seek a higher consciousness A state of peacefulness And know that God is always there. And every thought becomes a prayer. and you have, well me -- someone who over and over again examines the use of words that many people assume have a…
Read More

That toddlin’ town…

That is the song I always hear when I arrive in Chicago...the old one, not anything new and trendy.  But that seems fitting since my ties to this great city are long and deep and unrequited, ties that need to be revisited from time to time for reasons that are unclear to most who know me. What is it about Chicago?  Well, many years ago, years before I began to travel the world with frequency and ease, I packed a few belongings and a friend into a car and drove here to see the Tutankhamen exhibition at the vast Field Museum of Natural History.  I had never seen  a city…
Read More