Our world is full of music. Filled with it. But you will have to learn to hear this music. Or rather, you will have to unlearn the annoying and persistent habit of listening so that you can hear again. And that’s not an easy thing to do. Listening is what you’ve been taught. Listening is…
Near the beginning of the Episcopal worship service we sing a hymn called The Gloria. One stanza from this song has an eerie power over me. Specifically, it’s the last three words that I cannot ignore. Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father, Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of…
I am drawn to the mystery of our ancient ancestors and obsessed with their god-like silence. Having no written language they left us nothing ephemeral but instead laid a foundation of guttural sounds and gestures from which we formed our modern tongues. What they did pass on were things older and deeper than writing. Archetypal…
If I could hear just one word from you. Just one clear word and everything would change. To hear the church people talk, your words are a dime a dozen and fall like rain upon the just and the unjust. Broken souls who stumble in the church’s back door leave singing their own magnificat and I’m…
I have a problem with food. I know what the problem is. I eat compulsively. I can name the problem. I just don’t know what to do about it, exactly. Or maybe I just don’t want to do anything about it. What do I mean when I say I eat compulsively? I eat when I’m…
Being the last gasps of my dying competitive spirit Twenty-five miles in and there’s a rabbit up ahead. Some young guy with baggy shorts and a bike he got for Christmas. Look at him adjusting his ear buds. He has no idea what he has. Time for him is eternal and energy is always there for…
What you will notice first is the people. Look at them. See how they gather together in this place. Apparently this gathering ritual is a thing people do. And they are so at ease with it, gliding between the pews, exchanging greetings, having conversations before the service, waving across the room to their friends, sinking…
Some say we humans are made at the moment of conception. But I don’t agree. That’s when our bodies begin to be made, yes. But our souls are knit together in tragic and heroic moments, sometimes years before we are born, when the messages of our families are formed in the crucible of human experience.…
Sunday, 22 March in the season of Lent My God, my God, why have I forsaken You? Why have Your words, echoed through the ancient and holy Church, turned to babel in my ears? Why has my heart turned to stone? Did You harden it, as You hardened the heart of Pharaoh, for some mysterious…
I read recently that men are statistically more likely than women to be narcissists. The story was in the Washington Post and quoted an article from the journal of the American Psychological Association, so it seems to be a valid study. My own half century of interacting with men and women certainly does not represent…