Forney Charities
Improving communities by helping residents, one person at a time.
Category: Uncategorized
Who is This That Darkens Counsel?
A few days ago, I was speaking to a friend about the previous Sunday’s sermon. When he had heard that I was still serving a parish — yes, at my advanced years, somehow funked retirement, I did – he had requested that I send… Continue Reading “Who is This That Darkens Counsel?”
On Not Giving the Snake the Last Word
That bright morning the sun pleasantly warmed the awakening world. Another light in the sky, however, caught the attention of a stegosaurus nonchalantly munching in a grove of ferns. The quickly moving light, flaming bright — or was it the thunderous sonic boom as… Continue Reading “On Not Giving the Snake the Last Word”
Keepin’ It Real
When I took a church in Petersburg, Alaska, I had to head up there before my wife was able to leave California. She taught at a year-round school and her contract didn’t end until September. So, I and our preschool boys boarded Alaska Airlines… Continue Reading “Keepin’ It Real”
The Full, Real Deal, Body of Christ
Nikki King grew up in a hardscrabble hamlet in one of the hollows of Appalachia. Like many rural communities, it was awash in drug and alcohol addiction. She reports, “At 14 I could’ve pointed out everybody who would be dead.” At the urging of… Continue Reading “The Full, Real Deal, Body of Christ”
You’ve Gotta Work the Program
I remember when I had come to my first parish out in the desert, a little town called Inyokern. It was so small I remember driving through the main section of town and across the railroad tracks. My wife with a quaver in her… Continue Reading “You’ve Gotta Work the Program”
Resurrection is Living Water
When we last gathered, the sun had been obscured in deep darkness. Subterranean tremors shook the land. All that was stuck became unstuck. And the ghastliest spirits were let loose to roam the land. The veil separating holy and profane was rent in two. … Continue Reading “Resurrection is Living Water”
Lord, Have Mercy
The crowd which welcomed Jesus and his merry band into the streets of Jerusalem is the very same crowd that, at the end of the week, would scream, “Crucify. Crucify. Crucify. Giddy and bursting with excitement over a possible comeuppance for their Roman occupiers,… Continue Reading “Lord, Have Mercy”
We all Rise, Together
As a young woman, Diana Harvey Johnson, now seventy-four, marched up the steps of the courthouse to register to vote. There she was confronted by a white woman who pointed to a Mason jar on the counter. “How many butterbeans are in that jar.” … Continue Reading “We all Rise, Together”
“The Ten Suggestions?”
Helen and Henry Howard, an elderly couple, ran the little Union 76 station and café attached to it. It was just a wide spot in on the highway through Johannesburg, one of the three former mining towns served by the Randsburg United Methodist Church,… Continue Reading ““The Ten Suggestions?””
Stuff Happens
Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste, opens her book with the recollection of a old black and white photo of Germany in the 1930s, a rather famous photo taken at a Hamburg shipyard in 1936. The photo is of some hundred shipyard workers lined up… Continue Reading “Stuff Happens”
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