Not so terribly strange to be seventy
Over the weekend, I turned seventy. As I pondered the beginning of my eighth decade, Paul Simon’s lyric “How terribly strange to be seventy” played in my head. It's not the first time his songs from the 60s have colored my memories of adolescence. Or that I’ve...
Teach me your way, that I may walk in your truth
Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; -Psalm 86:11a “I’m reading Joanna Weaver’s Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, thinking about how people teach truth, and remembering my mother,” I said to my friend. We were enjoying our usual Friday...
But was my story true, is memory the truth?
Was any part of my memory true? Ten years ago, I wrote about memories of the day a fast-moving snow storm dumped several inches of snow on southern Connecticut—before Halloween. I was in high school at the time. In the middle of the day, school administrators made...
Where do you come from—geography, faith, source
From: a starting point “Where do you come from?” Meaning geography. A common question when getting to know someone new. My answer: “I grew up in Connecticut, and my parents were from northern Maine.” Both sets of grandparents were potato farmers—below/right is my...
Wife, daughter, self – it’s about relationships
At church yesterday—in the visiting time after morning rehearsal and before the service began—for some reason, I caught myself thinking about relationships and Beth Kephart’s Wife, Daughter, Self: A Memoir in Essays. The book sections into...
The Confused World of Modern Atheism
Modern Atheism 101 Remember the morning last May when I went upstairs to the loft and Keith read a passage from Rabbi Moshe Averick’s Nonsense of a High Order: The Confused World of Modern Atheism? Well, after he finished reading the book, he passed it along to me....