Monthly Archives: February 2023
Another cup of coffee
“For what it’s worth,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “it’s never too late . . . to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I […]
Three Rs for today
Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart. (Joel 2:12a) Seldom has a question caught my attention as suddenly and completely as the one I overheard on a busy street in Manhattan forty years ago. I had spent the day in Midtown and was headed to catch a bus for […]
Faith like a sparkling drop
No one knows what happened in the Transfiguration of Jesus (Matt. 17:1-9). Deep truths are elusive and almost always wrapped in mystery – from the Greek mustēs, “secret,” something we’re not supposed to talk about in public. Maybe we’re not supposed to talk about the Transfiguration, and maybe that’s why, after the disciples witnessed it, […]
The choice
It has been called “the most misread poem in America” (David Orr, The Atlantic, 19 May 2018). The poem is Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” and Frost seems to have shared that opinion. He warned his readers, “You have to be careful of that one; it’s a tricky poem – very tricky.” The way […]
That final trip home
My resolve not to return to Missouri for a visit started to waver months ago as I considered a retrospective (final?) tour of the turf where my family roots are sunk deep. I recalled how grounded I felt in 2019 when I last wandered the hills and homesteads my paternal family line has called home […]
You are the light of the world
Last week I said that, although there is so much darkness in the world around us, it’s not a world of complete darkness; a light shines, which the darkness will not overcome. That light is the light of love, I said, and we are its torches. Today in Matthew’s gospel we hear Jesus say the […]
The Sauntering Pilgrim 