advent journal
worn and wounded in my notes I found this phrase what is worn is not always wounded I’ve been staring at it for some time now trying to decide if I agree (and I think I wrote it) I think I was thinking about library lions whose tails are
advent journal
Stephen Sondheim died last week, as you probably know. His death last week affected me in several ways, not the least of which was taking me back to an afternoon in the Spring of 1988 when my friend Billy Crockett and I wandered up to the TKTS booth in Times
advent journal
I can tell by watching the clip that it happened a long time ago--1996 to be exact--but I saw it for the first time this week: Patti LaBelle singing “This Christmas” at the National Christmas Tree Lighting and getting to the part where the background singers are supposed to sing,
advent journal
sundowning some twenty winters ago I learned to leave the house before sundown so I do not go down with it outside the darkness feels expansive the house feels like a tomb the darkness is not the problem my depression pulls the house down wait--say that again the darkness is
advent journal
On this last day of November, the only leaves on the trees belong to the evergreens. A post about what I learned from the autumn leaves is woefully late, especially in a culture that puts out Halloween calendar in mid-August, but such is the nature of my life in these
advent journal
Stephen Sondheim died last week. He had Thanksgiving dinner with friends and died on Friday, unexpectedly it seems. Looking back through my texts, I heard about his death around six on Friday, because that is when I wrote a friend with whom I share a love of Sondheim and his
advent journal
I began serving as the bridge interim pastor at Westbrook Congregational Church UCC in Westbrook, Connecticut this morning. I will be there until the Sunday after Easter while they complete their search for a settled pastor. My post to begin my Advent Journal for this year is the manuscript of
advent journal
I think it was about fifteen years ago, maybe more, that Ginger asked me to write a story for our Christmas Eve service at North Community Church in Marshfield, Massachusetts. That story, A Faraway Christmas, has shown up off and on since--several times on this blog. This year, because of
advent journal
star treatment we drove down to the water last night to see the suggestion of a star made by two planets closer than they have been in eight hundred years close enough to imagine a star worth following a beautiful night on the shoreline snow on the rocks all of
advent journal
slouching towards bethlehem yeats put pen to page last century in the wake of a world war and as his wife was recovering from the pandemic before this one we’ve since learned how to keep the world at war without end to live in sustainable exhaustion and act as
advent journal
On the eve of the winter solstice and the cosmic illusion of the “Christmas Star” that Jupiter and Saturn will provide this week, I went back to a poem I wrote a couple of years ago that found new life this year, thanks to my friend, composer Taylor Scott Davis,
advent journal
I’ve missed a couple of days in my Advent journal. With Ginger’s help, I stepped away from everything to catch my breath and a sense of myself. I’m back tonight with my sermon for tomorrow. Earlier in Advent I was a part of a Zoom workshop with