These writings are more for personal use, and don’t really seem to lend themselves as well in a worship service.
There is so much sacred music out there – and most of it never mentions God, or would be what you’d think of to play in church (unless you’re in my home church, where on one Confirmation Sunday we played Weird Al Yankovic’s “Everything You Know Is Wrong”). There is… Read More »Etude
Hope is not knowing outcomes, but holding fast and keeping going What do you hope for? What do you hope in? What does it mean to live from a place of hope? And how can Church be an embodiment of hope? This reading is simply a response to a quote… Read More »Credo
Falling in love with Creation means falling in love with ourselves each other our neighbor And who is our neighbor? “Won’t you be my neighbor?” sings Mr. Rogers gently, looking straight into the camera, into the eyes of watching children, outsiders all (because they’re not on the set right there… Read More »Falling in Love with Creation
I have a pair of earrings carved from the found antlers of a moose in Alaska. Thinking about these delicate pieces of jewelry inspired this poem. And, as always, it seems my thoughts turn back to community, and the need to carve out hope together. And that we all have… Read More »Carve Out Hope
Wide open to the world, your love overflows. I’ll admit it, I’m really, really partial to dogs (I am starting to like cats a lot, though, but I am basically a dog person). Labs, shelties, goldens, chihuahuas, dachshunds – you name it. Days before the 2020 presidential election, Peter and… Read More »Angel Unaware
This is a poem that will probably need constant revision – not for poetry’s sake, but because there is repeatedly one damn killing after another. So the list will grow longer, and people of color, and LBGT folks, will make up the majority of this list. Unless “things change.” Unless… Read More »Say Their Names
Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we… Read More »Lament, Confession, and a Song to the Future
This poem was written in mid-January of 2021, after the insurrection at the US Capitol, and before the inauguration of President Biden. It had its birth as I walked around the college campus in our neighborhood. The play of early afternoon sunlight through chain link fencing on the nearby… Read More »Shadow Climber
Friends of mine once sent me a video of their new Golden puppy (OMG, what is more adorable than a Golden puppy!!) discovering snow for the first time. This poem just flowed out from that, pretty much nonstop. Then I thought of my newborn son (from many years ago, and… Read More »Wholly Wonder