PLAYING WITH FALSEHOOD AND FORFEITING THE RIGHT TO TRUTH Dag Hammarskjold was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1953 until…

BREAD AND THE BREAD OF LIFE “Bread,” the Croatian essayist Predrag Matvejević writes, is “the condition of peace and the cause of war, the promise of hope and the reason…

A TASTE SWEETER THAN HONEYCOMB We have a large patch of English thyme just beyond the porch where Jan and I have our morning coffee. It forms the border of…

GOD AND GARDENS Francis Bacon was not only Lord Chancellor of England under King James I, but in 1625 wrote the essay Of Gardens. He begins, “God Almighty first planted…

THERE AND BACK AGAIN It was good to be home last Thursday and to be with everyone at Saturday’s Food Truck fundraiser as well as in Sunday’s worship. I had…

LIVING WITH THE RHYTHM OF LIGHT AND DARK Earlier this week, our neighbors needed a ride to Bradley to catch a flight to visit their new grandbaby in California and…

CATCHING THE WIND OF THE SPIRIT “Rounds of fierce storms swept over Texas and the southern Plains on Tuesday,” the news report began, “uprooting trees, overturning semi-trucks, damaging buildings and…

ADD SOME SALT TO SWEETEN LIFE I was doing some baking this week and wondered why all the sweet, sugary concoctions that I was making included salt as one of…

PENTECOST AND FIRE AWARENESS One of humankind’s first and greatest achievements was mastering fire, learning to control and harness potentially destructive power for human good. Almost all the technological innovations…

UP, UP, AND AWAY On Sunday, 12 May, we observe the feast of the Ascension that celebrates the end of Jesus’ resurrection appearances and his ascending to heaven. Ascension itself…