A seminary student body participated in a day of recollection and reflection. As the Seminary President introduced the guest retreat leader—on a beautiful Saturday morning in spring--he apologized to the seminarians, "I'm very sorry for the distraction and the noise."This…
On my walk this morning, I spend some time talking with the geese. Two families heartwarmingly hanging out, nonplussed by an unremitting rain, the goslings nestled together at the edge of the pond. Irv and Dottie’s five are about all…
Sarah is an ordinary woman with a peculiar habit. You see, every Saturday, when the Jehovah's Witnesses make their neighborhood rounds, she invites them in. And begins by saying, "I'm glad to see you. I'm not going to covert, but…
The young couple stands in the long ticket queue at Knott's Berry Farm. Between the ticket kiosk and the main gate their two young boys--maybe ages five and six—are passing the time, playing, waiting for their parents. Their focus of…
In the emergency room, Benny's face is black and blue, caked in dried blood, his eyes pinched shut, his lips swollen and bleeding. In the middle of the night, two men had broken into Benny's home, beaten him severely, and…
Standing in a pristine Alaskan stream, the fisherman's first catch, a lovely eighteen-inch trout. The fisherman and his friend admire it. "Most impressive," his friend says thinking of the delectable evening meal ahead. And then, unceremoniously, the fisherman tosses the…
The middle drawer of her mother's dresser was filled with silk stockings, dozens of pairs in many exquisite colors, each wrapped in the store's original package. They had never been worn. Rachel admired the stockings, imagining the texture and enjoying…
A young minister returned to his hometown in north Georgia. He struck up a conversation with an old farmer. They stood by the fencerow and watched as a new picking-machine rolled through a cotton field. Until now, the farmer had…
"The barracks were full of them. The image was repeated over and over again. Butterflies. They were everywhere I looked. Some were crude. Others were quite detailed." In 1946 Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross visited the Maidenek concentration camp. The children's barracks were particularly sorrowful, with toys…
Somewhere along the way, every one of us has wrestled with discouragement, disillusionment or defeat (only exacerbated by a disappointment in ourselves).And yes, our pandemic year illuminated all of this.And this weight of our world is real. The George Floyd…
