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I feel stuck today. I have work to do, manuscripts to edit filled with words by authors who have done their best to make meaning out of faith and life in these days, and I feel like I am treading molasses, doing all I can to keep from drowning. Toni
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For many years now, my Facebook post on New Year’s Eve has been a line from a Counting Crows song: long December and there’s reason to believemaybe this year will be better than the last . . . . I began to realize that next year never seemed to come through. It
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I was born two weeks before Jesus. Since I had a December birthday, my mother worked hard to make sure it didn’t get lost in our Christmas celebration. She didn’t put up any decorations until December 13, the day after I was born. My father had some unexplained
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I want to say something before the votes are counted. I want to say out loud that my hope is not defined by those who make the most noise or create the most confusion. I want to share the words of those who are speaking to my despair, who feed
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Just in time for the holiday season, my publisher has given me the chance to buy my books at a deep discount for the next couple of weeks. So I am offering them here for $7 each at my Facebook Shop. I am happy to sign them before I mail
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I preached again this week at North Madison Congregational Church. The lectionary passages— Mark 9:33-37 and James 3:13-18—hit particularly close to home this week. Here is what I had to say. __________________________ As you may have gleaned from the personal information I have shared over our time together,
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I preached this week at United Churches of Durham, Connecticut, as a part of their Summer Preaching Series. My text was James 1:17-27. ____________________ When I read our passage from James this week, the first thing that came to mind for me was Broadway show tunes. Am I right? No?
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As far back as I can go in my memory, I remember my father talking about his dad dying at age fifty-seven. No Cunningham male had lived beyond that age, which meant my father was in his mid-twenties when his father died. Just before he turned fifty-seven and I was
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I didn’t grow up with snow. My parents were missionaries in Africa. What I remember as a child were the rainy seasons and the dry seasons that alternated year after year. One day we were listening to the radio in Zambia and the announcer said, “And now the weather
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Quinn, the storm, has been making its way across America and gets to the East Coast early tomorrow morning, which set me thinking about storm songs, mostly from a metaphorical sense. I couldn't help but begin my soundtrack for the storm with Kris Kristofferson's cover of
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Before I stared to write tonight, I scrolled through Facebook to see what folks had been up to today and found this video on a friend’s page. The poet in the video is responding to the shootings in Florida and asks, more than once, “When is it time to
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Though I preached this sermon only a couple of days ago, the events of the week have continued to unfold. Rather than try to update it, I will let it stand as its own little time capsule, even as I continue to figure out how to respond to what is