Christmas carols. Old familiar favorites. I remember singing them in grammar school — so well — I got kicked out of Glee Club for my rendition of Joy to the World!:) I used to plunk out the carol notes on the piano from my tattered Easy Carols Piano Book. Even when all grown up it made my heart glad…
Frederick Beuchner in his book Peculiar Treasures tells a story about Jesus’ daddy — the Dreamer. Thank you very much Fred. Let me paraphrase it here. After hearing Mary’s news and confronted with a nightmare of a marriage, Joseph does what any self respecting man would do. He decides to hit the hay and catch some ZZZZ’s. As…
Happy St. Nicholas Day, December 6! Have you heard this Advent carol? It is sung to an 18th century dance tune! Prepare the Way, O Zion, your Christ is drawing near!Let every hill and valley a level way appear.Greet one who comes in glory, foretold in sacred story,Oh, blest is Christ that came in God’s…
This clever word play on “Murder She Wrote” is not mine but the title of an exceptional exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum on Madison Avenue in New York City. A nerdy bibliophile, who volunteers at the Library of Congress, I have long wanted to visit the Morgan. The novel: The Personal Librarian whet…
If you looked up the word “impatience” in the dictionary, you would see a picture of my dad.😊 When I was growing up, my dad did not like to wait. He would not take us anywhere he anticipated crowds or lines. He would never go to a restaurant without a reservation. When we went to…
Advent 2022 begins Sunday, November 27th. Angels. Every year, when they were little, my children donned cardboard wings in the Christmas pageant. And through the centuries gilded angel wings have graced a bazillion Christmas cards. Angels. Pretty, poetic symbols. Anachronistic theology of the Middle Ages. Superstition in the scientific age. Right? Yet every Sunday we confess that “We…
Though my dad preferred a scalpel to an electric knife, on Thanksgiving the electric knife would do just fine. And fine was what everything had to be. Not just fine — but refined. My father insisted on orange zest in the cranberry sauce, oysters in the stuffing, and lemon peel in his espresso. My mother…
As the pandemic hit in early 2020, Emmanuel like many churches scrambled to adapt Sunday morning worship. Having not lived through an actual plague before and naively thinking it would be just a few weeks — or maybe at the most a few months — of disruption, I invented EEC@Home, a portable Morning Prayer service…
Read more Bye Bye EEC@Home, I Will Miss You! (But Not Too Much😊)
I first discovered Dave Grohl listening to the nineties music of Nirvana. After a shambolic academic record — and to his parents’ horror (his mom taught public school in Fairfax County for 30 years!) — Dave quit school his junior year to rock it out playing drums in local punk bands. And at the tender…
Leaves turn color. Yellow, red, orange, brown. Dry, they fly and fall from the sky. Carpeting the ground, like parchment, they crackle under foot. You can hear them. You can smell them – the mustiness of the earth. hist whist little goblin. hist whist little ghostling. e.e.cummings. It is that time of year again. As…
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