I spent Saturday with a group from church on a “LifeCraft Retreat,” where we built little boats as metaphors of our life journeys. We all started with the same pieces of wood and a roomful of materials and possibilities and each emerged with small crafts that both showed parts of
Thanks, Christine, for the poetry party. Peace, Milton
I was looking out Towanda’s Window the other day and saw this: Cornel West The phrase has stuck with me because I’ve kept thinking about what love looks like in public, and what form love takes as it gets lived out in our various relationships. Church, for instance.
Jorge is one of the people I work with who inspires me. He is a dishwasher who does a great job, but that’s not what gets me. Jorge works at both the restaurant at Duke and the Durham restaurant where I work. From Monday to Friday, he works from
I mow the grass not out of conquest, but obligation -- even simple necessity: if I don’t, our little dog disappears in the growing greenery that passes for a lawn. I’m not much of a turf builder. And so I pull-start the machine and begin traversing the yard,
Some parts of my job come easily for me – the cooking part, for instance. Some parts have a steeper learning curve – figuring out food costs, for one. In order to be profitable, what it costs to buy all the food needs to cost less than a third of what we
Corpus Christi, Texas is bracing for a hurricane; I am fasting, preparing for my colonoscopy; both I and my birthplace are being evacuated. Peace, Milton
I got wrapped up in my mind tonight and found myself to tangled to write, so I untangled myself by browsing through some of the music my nephews have shared with me. Here are some folks doing great stuff. Brett Dennen opens "Ain't No Reason" by
The beginning of the school year has meant a move for me. I’m back at Duke, as the chef for a restaurant my boss contracts to run on the Duke campus. We are open Monday to Thursday nights, and then I still work Sunday nights at the restaurant where
I’ve always been a big fan of words. I love their sounds, their meanings, the many ways they can be put together. I am pulled by poetry because it is words at their best, standing in fresh light, speaking deep truths, unlocking hearts. After the last couple of nights
(with apologies to middle schoolers) I’m sitting between Gustav and Hanna in the homeroom of life, wondering how to make sense of everything coming through the loudspeaker, the stream of non sequiturs that passes for news and the endless storm of chatter that follows, each of us choosing sides
He took the wings we weren’t going to use for dinner. We serve a roast chicken dish, so we cut up the birds so each customer gets one piece that is half of a breast with the first section of the wing bone attached and a second piece that