It was the start of a hard Christmas season. There are pieces missing from my life now which were all comfortably settled in place just two years ago.
Kamikaze Squirrels and Zinzi’s Cat
I drive through a quiet neighborhood on my way to work. This morning I was forced to drive it like a mad woman, dodging squirrels right and left that jumped out from the side of the road that ran across in front of me. They scooted by as my tires rolled through the leaves scudding across the road. One had […]
The Phone Booth
I stopped at a mountain gas station this morning, between hillsides spread with leaves about to turn spotted with the scarlet flashes of the precocious maples. At the corner of the building, empty of its original instrument, was a phone booth. I was reminded of the path from the road up to my university campus. The campus, prior to being […]
Pieces Go Missing
I was reminded this morning that tomorrow, December 1, marks the day of an accident two years ago that took a beloved and friend and mentor from this earth. It was the start of a hard Christmas season. One where tears held their own against the joy and the laughter. It was the start of a year of sorrow followed […]
By Design: Book Review (ish)
Almost a year ago I began working with Dr. Martha MacCullough, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Cairn University to shape her manuscript on educational philosophy into a book. I learned a lot about the editing process, educational philosophy, page layout, and the awesome name pairings of educational scholars (seriously, “Chubb and Moe”? “Long and Frye”? “Bigge and Shermis”? I came to […]
There’s a Drought in My Hymnal
This morning, on Facebook, I posted the following as a status update: So, I always feel a bit perturbed when we sing hymns of the early 20th Century in Church. It is not that I dislike singing hymns, just that I’ve never thought the first half of the 20th Century particularly fertile soil for hymn-writers. I think to myself, “There […]
Starry Nite
The evening’s activities put me in mind of the event a year earlier. The tone both similar and worlds apart – a celebration of the start of the Christmas season, but this year without the aching heart and scratchy eyes of the day’s grief. As I walked away, the voices, amplified by microphones, echoed off the trees, the strains of the […]
Grief and Birth
I’ve been trying to figure out if, and if so how, I should add my voice to the many speaking out regarding the proposed name change for Philadelphia Biblical University that was announced this week. On the one hand, everyone is hearing my voice, because I’ve been a part of the team crafting emails, blog posts, and responses to comments […]
Missing Uncle Sam
O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer Our spirits by Thine advent here; Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, And death’s dark shadows put to flight. “Christmas is a time of joy,” my boss said yesterday. “I have to keep reminding myself of that.” It is. A joy tinged with sorrow, as the Man of Sorrows left his throne and […]
Living Stones
In Joshua 22, there’s this misunderstanding. The tribes who took allotments of land on the east side of the Jordan are finally going home after helping the other tribe conquer the land of Canaan, and they build an altar, somewhere near where they are going to cross back over the Jordan. The tribes in Canaan think they’re trying to build […]