tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-205030362008-09-06T12:43:10.436-04:00A meandering passage recording the life of an ordinary clergyman as it careens from the sublime to the ridiculous, often without knowing which is which.WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comBlogger262125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-49609796707713708462008-09-06T12:38:00.002-04:002008-09-06T12:43:10.452-04:00

What constitutes a nation? I am wondering because recently I read about resurgent Scottish nationalism, and the possibility that Scotland may try to dissolve its political union with England. Not to worry just yet. Somewhat like Quebec a few years ago there is a lot of talk about referenda and such. What actually happens is far from certain. Then I thought of South Ossetia, and Abkhasia,

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-57468300177467942382008-09-03T10:27:00.002-04:002008-09-03T10:41:08.296-04:00

Speaking of delicatessens, remembering my sandwich last week, there is nothing like one in my fair city. This is important in a new way to me, now. Friends from my college days came through town. His family was my informal “bar mitzvah instruction” into ways of Jewish life. I attended my first Seder with them, ate chopped chicken liver and smoked whitefish and when it was truly festive, lox.

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-22460541405116404332008-09-01T20:44:00.003-04:002008-09-06T12:32:42.985-04:00

I’ve had a string of good luck recently. Nothing fancy, mind you, but it’s as if the universe decided to hold the door open instead of letting slap in my face. I was away in Texas recently, preaching at a former church and conducting a thirtieth anniversary wedding. Those were the excuses for going back to a place where we spent too few years, and where our youngest was born and our eldest faced

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-9940739573950585092008-08-30T06:47:00.001-04:002008-08-30T06:49:32.290-04:00

Well, that was a surprise. Mind you, I mentioned Governor Palin months ago as a rising star in the political firmament. Like others who saw Senator Obama in 2004, I pegged her as a “next gen” candidate. You can read all about it in the paper and on other sites, the twist and turns and spin it all means. Let me say something unlikely to be heard in the din. Diversity is now normal. With each

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-44413609803680075412008-08-26T22:01:00.002-04:002008-08-26T22:06:23.125-04:00

Well, I for one was not impressed. Joe Biden is a fine guy; even David Brooks likes him. But honestly, I was hoping for someone more thrilling. Months ago – Ok it was June – I teased the folks at StreetProphet (a Kos like website for squirrelly religious folk) about an Obama-Clinton ticket. I was laughed at as hopelessly naïve. This past week it was the dream that wouldn’t die. Maybe my

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-38291141788157694482008-08-20T20:23:00.002-04:002008-08-20T20:42:17.979-04:00

Summer turned out to be anything but relaxed. Nothing wrong, far from it. But after a jaunt to Austin this weekend (business and pleasure) I will heve been on the road three separate times this summer, five if you count preaching dates locally to Ann Arbor and Holland. That makes for a busy summer. And Labor Day is just two weeks off. Good news: repainted the rest of my garage (except

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-43722290621893424682008-08-15T21:53:00.001-04:002008-08-15T21:55:38.855-04:00

Holy cow, another week has gone by. Of course, I have been home only part of that time, and being away meant that scads of stuff was waiting here to be done, tapping their figurative impatient toes as it were. In just that short time I was away, however, 16 days, sunrise got markedly later. I rise with the sun, which means in summer my eyes open before six no matter when I closed them. But on

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-21142888727059810742008-08-08T08:33:00.002-04:002008-08-08T08:36:58.509-04:00

I spent much of Wednesday and Thursday traveling the back roads of Vermont and Massachusetts. Partly it was to see places I had not seen before in all the years I lived in the area, but it was also to see familiar places and take pleasure in their continuity. Of course, nature is the most durable. To see a fine tree or a mountain as a child and then again as an adult is very consoling. We

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-90211777133012881662008-08-04T10:27:00.000-04:002008-08-04T10:29:32.666-04:00

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died yesterday. I only ever read his first book, “One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” but that book changed Russia. “A great writer,” the obit said, “is a secret government in his country.” Last week a deranged man assassinated people in a church because of that church’s values. It remains to be seen if he makes a difference in the country. I suspect not, but he

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-28563550600116637992008-07-31T10:56:00.004-04:002008-07-31T11:15:43.881-04:00

I am a fourth generation Unitarian. Before I came to Grand Rapids to serve an independent liberal church, I served four Unitarian churches as a clergyman and was a member of four before that, starting when I was in kindergarten. While I do not know those personally affected by Sunday's tragedy at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Society in Knoxville, I do know two previous ministers

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-62492278506962728902008-07-27T21:01:00.001-04:002008-07-29T05:22:09.930-04:00

Not physically I should say. I attended a wedding today, the daughter of a cousin. We've watched her grow up, albeit from a distance. She is but a year older than my eldest, which makes my two sons the next most likely to marry. Good duty, as I like to say, but less and less pleasant for me. Whenever I go to a wedding, which happens less and less, a sort of cultural jet lag sets in which makes

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-50185986808128744822008-07-21T14:57:00.001-04:002008-07-21T15:01:26.794-04:00

I simply forgot about you. Boy, does that say a lot. Not that I had so much to do. With our youngest away for a month the wife and I are experiencing our first taste of empty nesting, or more properly a return to coupleness. Not a bad thing at all, and with it the liberty to structure time differently. So what did i do while forgetting about you? - Started cleaning my windows which have

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-32380069178655856882008-07-12T17:17:00.003-04:002008-07-13T07:55:59.238-04:00

Sorry about the delay again. It's hard to write on the run, while traveling. I was on the road from the 29th through the 3rd. Took the day off on the 4th, even from celebrating. Then it was back to work and preparing to get my son to camp off in upstate New York. So that's where the time went. As it happens what happened today returned me to what I wrote before.My last two posts were about

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-91162318314827475912008-06-28T09:29:00.001-04:002008-06-28T09:31:47.359-04:00

Watch House? You know, the misanthropic medical genius who diagnoses weird diseases on Fox? It's the only program on that network I watch, and only then because my misanthropic son recommended it. Well, the poor folks who come to him are put through tests verging on torture. You have to be pretty sick and really desperate to need him and to put up with that battery, which word I use in both

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-48737455163395708622008-06-26T08:08:00.000-04:002008-06-26T08:11:02.551-04:00

I’m confused. That’s not unusual of course, more normal than not. My moments of clarity are rare. A friend and colleague delivered a very telling essay yesterday, strong in both insight and challenge. The insight was that many people in churches, especially the kind I serve, are hobbled by a deep sense of shame. She, my colleague, deftly distinguished guilt I (the usual thing we associate

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-78698307414184979402008-06-24T13:02:00.002-04:002008-06-24T13:07:05.345-04:00

Lies Fort Lauderdale. Maybe that's why it is so hot! There’s a lovely little teapot tempest here because of the convention center where my conference is being held. It happens to be within the ‘perimeter’ of the Port of Fort Lauderdale and that means (in these hyper security conscious times) that we can be asked to show photo ID to enter, a condition not present when the convention was

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-79350607258102941712008-06-22T08:11:00.003-04:002008-06-22T08:14:50.512-04:00

In the Tampa Bay area now, pausing to see friends and preach in a colleague’s church. Could not help but wonder if the car from Alaska going past me on the road might be on its way to Key West. Journeys of the body are journeys of the mind, which is why we take them and why we read about them. I’ve already enjoyed a conversation with a reader about my deep pockets of outrage provoked by that

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-60088447550843257392008-06-19T20:14:00.002-04:002008-06-19T20:18:39.536-04:00

Well, at least I have a good excuse this time. Traveling. At the moment I am in a hotel near Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta. No, I am not between flights. Nor am I in Atlanta per se. As odd as it sounds, I am driving to Fort Lauderdale for a conference. Long story, but one step along the way is spending the night here. And I thought, as long as there is wussy but free wifi I should post

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-84934005918785197702008-06-12T19:42:00.002-04:002008-06-12T19:45:22.489-04:00

Dueling oppressions. My ‘ism’ is more important that yours is how this works. It is at least as old as Anthony and Douglass, Susan and Frederick, when the women’s movement that started before the Civil War willingly turned its efforts to support abolition of slavery with the hope and reasonable belief that once that scourge was removed, the blight of women’s lack of rights would be ripe for

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-64159866692904132302008-06-08T08:13:00.002-04:002008-06-08T08:19:09.359-04:00

... Let me point to the dirt swept underneath during the primary season. Now that it’s over, I can speak to the conclusion of the Democratic Nominating Process. Although to call it that is a bit more dignified that it is. First, my bias. I am an historian by nature. Those who know me know this as well. I have a brain stuffed with information; not by choice, it just gets in there. And as

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-74519095996927541792008-06-06T12:18:00.001-04:002008-06-06T12:21:04.217-04:00

I am sore. We have a softball team, the church that is. I cannot speak with perfect knowledge but this may be our first team. And I am on the team. Mostly symbolically, of course, but this week I went out to root them on and got put into the game. A little background now. We are in a league, playing other organizations. It is coed and low key and not the stuff of Kevin Costner or Dennis

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-82992316824179950562008-05-31T16:25:00.003-04:002008-06-02T13:48:14.711-04:00

Golly, has it been a week again? Sorry about that. May turns out to be the warm December, with lots of events and celebrations even as work itself continues to move right along. At least the weather is easier to take. First, let me give a shout out to Johnny P, from my old haunting grounds in Brooklyn. He tossed another C note in tree fund. You go guy, and the rest of you folks can feel free to

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-18479436066838588382008-05-24T13:12:00.001-04:002008-05-24T13:14:07.902-04:00

I can solve global warming, by the way. It’s easy, and actually gets us two for the price of one. Remember Nuclear Winter? Why not explode a variety of nuclear weapons somewhere near the Antarctic, which is about as far from as many ecosystems as you can get. I know, penguins and other creatures are down there, but as a percentage of both particular species and species in general, not so many

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-19053646857906340752008-05-22T10:57:00.002-04:002008-05-22T11:00:34.104-04:00

I saw it almost every day for eleven years, outside my living room window, between my home and midtown, its gothic towers ever present in the day and its glittering swag of lights at night that follow its wide catenary arch. I loved the twinkling of vehicle lights as they scurried across the roadway. I read David McCullough’s great book titled, “The Great Bridge.” Learned of Roebling and Tweed

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20503036.post-66232027222112046272008-05-18T10:12:00.002-04:002008-05-18T10:15:59.019-04:00

Passed the 15,000 mark in visitors (most of you are multiple visitors so count yourself as often as necessary). Thank you for the patience and persistence. Since it is Sunday morning I have to go. If you drop by (and especially if you didn't go to church) consider dropping a buck or two to plant a tree or two. See you soon!

WFWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15516545148368090450noreply@blogger.com