Prairie Sketches

I long feared baldness (which has afflicted all the men in my family except Hill and me).  It wasn't so much the prospect of a head without hair -- my youngest brother Charlie has a beautiful bald head -- so much as the proposition that the marks my hair masked for most of my life… Continue reading The Marks We Carry

Water coolers, morning talk shows, and the intraweb have been abuzz this week with reactions to Presiding Bishop Michael Curry's sermon at the #RoyalWedding.  The Twitterverse tweeted and twitted, as celebrities, pundits, and royals alike wrestled with Bishop Curry's very simple (and very Gospel-centric) message: Love has the power to transform this tired, old world… Continue reading The Power of Love

The ancient Celts had a term for a space where Heaven and earth almost touch.  They called such a space a "thin place."  As the Celtic saying goes, "Heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter."  As I have become more aware of the presence of… Continue reading Thin Places

When I was a teenager, I was active in a youth community in the Episcopal church called Happening.  We held spiritual retreats for high school kids twice a year, where a ragtag band of us freewheeling teenagers, dressed in our finest flea market attire, would shower each other with Pixy Stix dust and hugs, would… Continue reading The Cost of Freedom

Late last week, Ashley and I drove to Auburn to pick up our gently used pop-up camper (translation: temporary housing).  After hitching the camper up, we decided to get some dinner.  Well, what restaurant in Auburn has a parking lot large enough to accommodate a truck with a camper in tow?  Only one I could… Continue reading What was lost now is found; what was dead has begun to live.