I started teaching at my new school just a couple of weeks before the end of the grading term, which means I needed books we could read fairly quickly. I’m also teaching eighth graders for the first time, and adjusting to younger students. When I found The Jungle Book
I began this morning with this thought from Donald Miller: Leaders aren’t cynical. I found this song running through my head this afternoon, from Jackson Browne: Doctor, my eyes cannot see the skies – is this the price for having learned how not to cry And it’s been a
Here in America we yell at each other as though anger were a pre-existing condition, and diatribe an anagram of democracy; but screaming doesn’t make it so: louder and truer are not synonyms -- the same goes for rich and smart. Using poetry to talk politics is like giving
Years ago – OK, many years ago, my father and I were at a country fair in Cleburne, Texas. We walked around, ate fried things, and I remember enjoying the evening for the way it let him tell stories of his life growing up that I had not heard before. One
Thanks to a link from a friend, I sat down to these words after watching my NCAA Men’s Basketball Bracket go bust, thanks to the upsets of the day: The world is a confusing place. Correlation looks like causation; the signal sounds like the noise; randomness is everywhere. This
Today was the first day of the week that I have not had to go from school to the Duke restaurant. Instead, I came home to cook dinner. OK, first I took a basketball nap, meaning I dozed off watching first round games of the NCAA Men’s Tournament, and
On my way from school to kitchen this afternoon, I had the misfortune of being on I-40 when they decided to block it because the Vice President was visiting somewhere nearby. He never came anywhere near the gang of terrorists parked around me. And I was thirty minutes late to
I started rereading A Passage to India today. One of the people I work with at the Durham restaurant was asking for books to read and I suggested my favorite of E. M. Forster’s novels. When she said she was going to read it, I decided I would go
In the shadow of the chapel steeple we’ve simmered and sautéed all evening, following the familiar patterns we know, trying a few new things, marking time by making dinners, passing plates, and, finally, taking out the trash. This morning, time was moved along by turning pages, the clicking of
I gave my notice to my chef who hired me for both the Duke and Durham restaurants. Though my exit will be somewhat gradual over the next five or six weeks, I am leaving my job as a professional chef to return to teaching, and specifically teaching English in a
A certain man had two sons. It’s the way Jesus started a lot of the parables, including the one we call the Prodigal Son, which, I might add, is named for the younger sibling. It’s one of those stories I’ve heard so many times I can picture
I continued my reading of Nora Gallagher’s Practicing Resurrection and only got about five pages in when I a quote that brought the rest of the day rushing back to me. A spiritual director told me once that God is found on the edge of things, in the margins.