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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”
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”
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?””
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”
Bishop Michael Curry, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, in his new book, Love is the Way[1], tells the story in the opening pages of a woman with a mission who became an integral part of their family. Michael’s mother died when he… Continue Reading “Into the Valley of Despair”
Anyone familiar with the 12-step recovery movement would recognize this introduction: “Hi, my name is Joe, and I’m a recovering QAnoner.” I case you’re wondering about QAnon; it is a loose collection of conspiracy beliefs centered around Donald Trump and the Republican Party and… Continue Reading “Touch me, Heal me”
I remember when we lived in downtown Los Angeles, Jai and I were the dorm parents at what had been a boarding house, Dorcas House, next to the church. College-age women who were interns at the summer program and for our tutorial programs we… Continue Reading “Not Knowing Left from Right”
I remember as a young boy awaking one morning to a disagreement between Grandma and my brother who was then in the first grade. It seems she had been going over some of his science notes with him and he was attempting to tell… Continue Reading “Faith and Habitations of the Mind”
Water, the stuff of life or dangerous high seas. The staff of life or chaos and death. I find it fitting, and intriguing, that the story of Jesus baptism is paired in our lectionary readings with the first creation account of Day One in… Continue Reading “Out of Chaos”
There’s a story of two small Baptist churches at an isolated Midwest crossroads. Both across the street from one another. This is the story. Somewhere along the line in the mid-fifties one of the pillars of the one of the churches died – and… Continue Reading “Mary’s Sunday”