Monthly Archives: January 2022
The wideness of mercy
The season after Epiphany has been described as the season when “we reflect on the nature of the Messiah who has come, and we face the risky problem of how we are to act on the basis of our reflection” (Robert McAfee Brown in Social Themes of the Christian Year: A Commentary on the Lectionary, […]
Where’s everybody going?
“I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills.” So Karen Blixen begins Out of Africa, the account of her life in Kenya. At the beginning of the movie based on the book, Meryl Streep repeats that line wistfully, as if invoking a memory. “I had a farm in Africa . […]
This call is for you
When our celebration of Christmas ends, the work of Christmas begins. According to theologian and poet Howard Thurman, that work is: “To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among brothers [and sisters], To make music in the heart.” The […]
At the gate of the year
Since I was a child, hardly a new year has begun when I don’t think of my grandfather Howard Fullerton and a little poem we discovered after his death. Let me tell you the story of that poem. In the dark, uncertain days of late 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II, England’s […]
The Sauntering Pilgrim 