dirtying paper. scratching for beauty.
*if you’re curious where to find the soul-stretching landscape shown in the picture above, it’s in Ireland, on a stretch of path between Killarney and Black Valley. It’s a place of wonder that Miska and I discovered while walking The Kerry Way. You can’t see our faces while we’re snapping the photo, but we’re all smiles.
For twelve years (almost to the day), it has been my joy to be the pastor of All Souls Charlottesville, this vibrant, joyful, quirky, serious (sometimes too serious), playful, artful, generous, Jesus-loving church. When folks who should have known better asked Miska and me to move to Charlottesville to help form a new church with …
3:27 a.m. I’m awake in the wee hours of the night. The house is dark. I walk gently so that the creak of these old floors won’t rouse those I love. I step onto our back porch and gaze at the starlit sky, breathing clean air. For weeks, this weeping world has writhed and groaned …
When I was a kid, my mom turned mundane or challenging realities into memories, into moments of joy. Once we had little money for Christmas, and mom scrounged the house pulling out odds and ends (an old camera, a beat-up typewriter, various knick-knacks). She wrapped them and put them under the tree. We thought they …