I wake up most mornings thinking of ways to escape, even if just for a while, the distressing reality of life in America today. Many of you may also be looking for respite, given the daily onrush of alarming news. I cope by immersing myself in activities that bring both peace and a sense of ...
Ecclesiastes 9: 11-18 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favour to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all. For no one can anticipate the time of disaster. ...
One of the most inane aphorisms tossed around is that one shouldn’t mix politics and religion. It ranks right up there with “everything happens for a reason” on the list of adages that drive me crazy. One organization that emphatically rejects the notion that politics and religion shouldn’t mix is Sojourners, an American Christian ...
A good friend of mine, Mary Berlinghof of Newport, RI, shared an opinion piece from The New York Times with me today. It was written by a Times Contributing Opinion Writer, Margaret Renkl, whose byline caught my eye since she is from Nashville, where my daughter and her family live. Please read it: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/23/opinion/lent-spring.html?referringSource=articleShare ...
My mom visited us here in New Orleans recently and something she said made me stop and think. She said nearly everyone she knows expects Donald Trump will win a second term. I retorted that she did indeed know one person who believes Trump won’t be re-elected — ME! — and reminded her that her ...
My October Fun About a month ago, I had back surgery at Tufts Medical Center. I’d been warned repeatedly that this was “major surgery” and that recovery would be long. But I didn’t really need to be warned because my dear sister Gracie underwent similar surgery in June and I’d watched her recovery. So ...
Last week I began reading Disunion!, a book chronicling events over a 70-year period that set the stage for the Civil War. The book, by University of Virginia history professor Elizabeth Varon, has made me wonder about my own education in the public schools of South Carolina and the private school I attended in Virginia. ...
I recently heard from a long-time friend in South Carolina, Mr. Eager Beaver, a high school civics teacher in the hamlet of Van Wyck. I mentioned to him what a mess I thought the country was in, but I must have said some things he found extreme. Mr. Beaver, shocked to the marrow by some ...
When it seems I’ve dropped off the face of the earth for a month, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing to write about, it only means that other things kept me from it. That’s what happened this last month when two events — an initially scary 10-day illness and The Women’s World Cup — sidelined me. ...
This morning I re-read a wonderful little book entitled Falling Upward by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest. I first read it on the recommendation of one of my sisters, who isn’t conventionally religious. I suspect it interested her because it doesn’t just speak to Christians, but to anyone who lives life thoughtfully. In a chapter ...
