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Daily Passages
A weekday blog, traveling through sacred space to find our element.
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A Saturday blog, reflecting on music that frees us to find our element.
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Daily Passages
The Tragic World of Titus
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Pastoral Passage* (Titus 3:1-11) transports me to the Shakespearean stage of Titus Andronicus, under the direction of Julie Taymor. The genius of Lion King and Across the Universe fame was the director, both on stage and in film, of this little-known work of Shakespeare, his first tragedy. Read the play and [...]
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I Say a Little Prayer
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Isaiah 58) transports me to 2002 and the campus of Mars Hill College, my alma mater, and my place of employment for 12 years. Like virtually all liberal arts schools with a denominational affiliation, Mars Hill faced the challenge of holding rigorous academic study and devout religious fervor in [...]
It Ain’t Necessarily So
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Proverbs 16) transports me to the stage of Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre for the newly revised revival of Gershwin’s great opera, Porgy and Bess. The scaled-down version, modernized and made to fit into the time frame of Broadway musicals, re-tells a story of driving passions and betrayals and conflicts [...]
A Divided Body Politic
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (I Kings 3:16-28) transports me to the summer of 1946 in the cotton fields of Springfield, Alabama, where 6 year old Dewey Cox is going out to play with his brother Nate. Dewey says, Today’s gonna be the best day ever! and Nate responds, Yeah, ain’t nothin’ horrible gonna [...]
Watershed Experiences
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (John 7:25-52) transports me to a hike up the mountain above my brother Dave’s house, where the folks who started Everybody’s Pizza in Decatur have bought land from Uncle Tony and cousin Alice. The ridge line there, at 3,000 feet, marks the Eastern Continental Divide, and makes its way [...]
Black Hole Son
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Pastoral Passage* (Ephesians 1:3-10) transports me to a patent office in Bern, Switzerland, land of the clocks, in September of 1905, where a patent examiner was evaluating patent applications for electromagnetic devices. This work around the transmission of electric signals led the young Albert Einstein to the discovery that forever changed [...]
Dream Weavers
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Daniel 2) transports me to a crazy dream I had early this morning. I was traveling somewhere, and had my dog, Charlene Darlin’, in the car. We were traveling down a mountain road, and stopped to do some hiking. We got out of the car, and before going on [...]
A Season of Change
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Ecclesiastes 3) transports me to July 23, 1962, when I had not yet turned one year old, and John Hammond from Columbia records was at the Bitter End coffeehouse in Greenwich Village to record a live performance of a folk singer named Pete Seeger. The set began with an [...]
We’ll Have a Gay Old Time
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (Esther 4) transports me to the chapel of Southern Seminary in Louisville, 1987, where the seminary choir and orchestra were debuting Esther, the Queen, an operatic re-telling of the book of Esther written by Mozelle Sherman (lyrics) and Ted Nichols (music). This may sound a bit unlikely, but I [...]
In the Groove
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (John 7:1-24) transports me to Bristol, Tennessee, circa 1927, when the musical universe experienced the “Big Bang” of country twang through the first commercial recordings of the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. I remember learning guitar off of some homemade hand me down cassettes of these sessions, and even [...]
Ghost Towns
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Isaiah 33:1-16) transports me to one of my earliest memories; I couldn’t have been much more than three years old when my parents took me on a day trip to visit Ghost Town in the Sky, a tourist trap on top of a mountain in western NC designed to [...]
Recurring Curses
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Psalm 69:16-29) transports me to the wonderful world of the nighttime subconcious, aka the dream world, in this case, the bad dream world of nightmares. I was just at a coach approach training event in Winston-Salem, and the subject came up during a break; people were sharing some of [...]
Kiss of Death
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (2 Samuel 20) transports me to the brutal killing fields of Syria, where the government of Bashar al-Assad is continuing to bear down on the popular uprising with bombing raids against cities and towns. Unlike the Arab spring movements in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere, the Syrian people have [...]
I Saw Her Today at the Reception
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (John 6:60-71) transports me to the next version of what my friend Wanda Murga in Cuba calls a proyecto loco, a crazy project. I tend to come up with ideas for music and church that come out of left field, if not beyond the fence. Jesus Loves You Yeah, [...]
Great Aspirations
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Pastoral Passage* (Acts 2:42-47) transports me to happy hour at a friend’s house last Friday, where a group of folks gathered in the back yard to enjoy good fellowship around a makeshift table with chips and salsa and various concoctions to gladden the heart. At some point in the conversation, one [...]
Iron Bar Chef
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Isaiah 51:12-16) transports me to the 5E block of the Buncombe County Detention Facility, where members of Ecclesia Baptist hold a regular Bible study every Monday evening with 10 of the inmates. My friend and fellow Ecclesia member Dennis was the motivator and inspiration behind this ministry. He had [...]
Enough Already
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Proverbs 30:7-9) transports me to the the mid 1950s Milledgeville, Georgia home of novelist Flannery O’Connor. Having gained the reputation as one of the more brilliant short story writers, O’Connor was stung one day by a critic who said that while her stories were intriguing, she wasn’t particular gifted [...]
Way Bread
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (Nehemiah 9:9-37) transports me back into Tolkien’s Middle Earth, to the elvish land of Lothlórien to be specific, where Lady Galadriel bestows gifts on the fellowship of the ring. The gifts include a vial of light for Frodo, some elven rope for Sam, the Elfstone for Aragorn, a Galadrim [...]
Give Us Lord Our Daily Bread
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (John 6:25-59) transports me to the last Sunday of every month at Ecclesia Baptist, a Sunday that finds me and Kim, along with other Ecclesia Baptist folks, rummaging through our pantries before we head off to church. It’s a Sunday we focus on food, as we celebrate the Lord’s [...]
Cinderella Stories
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Pastoral Passage* (I Corinthians 10:1-5) transports me to Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis, the backyard of the Butler Bulldogs in what was billed as the greatest Cinderella story in sports history. It was March Madness and the Final Four of 2010, as Butler, from the unheralded mid-level Horizon League, sought to cap [...]
New Wave
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Habakkuk 3:8-19) transports me to Sydney, Australia, circa 1977, where a white lawyer is defending a group of black tribal Aborigines in a murder trial. It is one of Peter Weir’s earlier movies, The Last Wave, and in my estimation one of his best. The murder and trial soon [...]
Fantastic Voyage
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Job 9) transports me inside a nuclear submarine, the Proteus, during the height of the Cold War in the mid 1960s. In something of a reversal of the Space Race, the US and Russia are racing here to see who can explore not the grand scale of the cosmic [...]
Crossing the Jordan
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (Joshua 3) transports me to the Mines of Moriah in Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, where Frodo and his band of fellow travelers are trapped deep in the mountain. Gandalf warns them, We have but one choice, to face the long, dark of Moriah. Be on your guard. There [...]
Being on the Water
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (John 6:16-24) transports me to the Asheville Mall, 1979, where I worked during my senior year of high school in an import store called Curious Cargo. Asheville was hopping that year with the arrival of Hollywood stars and director Hal Ashby, as Being There was filmed on the Biltmore [...]
Heavenly Honey Buns
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Psalm 81) transports me to the NC State Fair, where family fun runs the gamut from livestock exhibitions and cooking competitions to concerts and midway rides. What started out over 150 years ago as a simple agricultural exhibition, designed for farmers to proudly show off their craft and the [...]
Pans of Biscuits
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (2 Kings 4:42-44) transports me to the annual Dotson thanksgiving feast at the mountain home of brother Dave and his wife, Greta. We all have our tried and true side dishes we bring to the bash, to go along with the six or seven turkeys that get roasted or [...]
Emergency Rations
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (John 6:1-15) transports me to the kitchen of Pizza Hut on Hurstbourne Lane, Louisville, KY, circa 1985, where I was working my way through seminary as a pizza chef. I loved plopping the flour and oil and whatnot in the big mixer and watching it work with the dough. [...]
Chips
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Pastoral Passage* (I Corinthians 2) transports me to the days of my childhood when I got to accompany my dad, a specialist in electronics, on his jobs to various and sundry churches large and small to repair electronic organs. I carried the toolboxes and fetched tools, such as the often-used red-handled [...]
Conspiracy Theory
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Isaiah 8:11-22) transports me to all sorts of tv shows and movies that share a common theme – X-Files, Alias, Lost, The Manchurian Candidate, The Insider, Three Days of the Condor, Marathon Man, The Truman Show, The Bourne Identity, The Pelican Brief, etc etc etc. The commonality, in case [...]
No Bull
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Psalm 50) transports me to Peace Camp, aka the annual gathering of the Baptist Peace Fellowship, circa 1992, on the campus of Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia. The Bible study leader for the week was a Cherokee Indian – seminary professor – psychiatric social worker – bluegrass singer – [...]
Hearing Voices
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (Deuteronomy 20) transports me to the alarm clock radio, which woke me up this morning blaring out the latest details of the gunman who walked into Oikos University in Oakland and went on a shooting spree, killing seven people execution style and wounding three others. The school attracts people [...]
Objections Sustained
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (John 5:30-47) transports me to one of the best courtroom movies of all time, My Cousin Vinny, as personal injury lawyer Vinny Gambini (Joe Pesci) and his girlfriend Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) travel from New York City to rural Beechum County, Alabama to defend Vinny’s young cousin Bill [...]
On Being Human
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Pastoral Passage* (Galatians 4:1-7) transports me to Rome in the mid 2nd century BCE, where Senator Lucanus observed an impressive capacity for intelligence in a slave he had brought from Libya, began educating him, and eventually freed him. The freed slave, Publius Terentius Afer, better known as Terence, became one of [...]
The Everlasting Godfather
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Isaiah 9:1-7) transports me back 40 years to March, 1972, when we theater goers were first introduced to the trilogy of movies featuring the Corleones of New York City, led by the Don of the family, Vito, played by Marlon Brando, cheeks full of cotton balls. I’ve been thinking [...]
Teach Your Parents Well
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Proverbs 4) transports me to a presentation I attended several years ago, by one of the world’s leading experts in community health, Dr. Adrien Ngudienkama. Dr. Ngudienkama is from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Africa’s deadliest war throughout the nineties displaced him, along with over 3 million other [...]
Meet the Fathers
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (Genesis 50) transports me to Coconut Grove, Florida, home of Bernie and Roz Fockers, who are meeting the Byrnes of Oyster Bay, Long Island, parents of their prospective daughter-in-law Pam, for the first time. It’s the quintessential clash of cultures, and a comedy of errors ensues, with the up-tight [...]
Manifest Destiny
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (John 5:19-29) transports me to intense conversations I’ve had in and around the hospital the past couple of days, as my sister-in-law Carolyn continues to make an amazing recovery from Tako-Tsubo, aka stress induced cardiomyopathy, which very nearly took her life. Yesterday morning when she awoke we had our [...]
Sweet Tea
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Pastoral Passage* (Revelation 22:1-5) transports me to a tea shop I visited in Beijing several years ago, where I saw more varieties of tea than I had ever imagined existed. The shop treated each customer to a full service tea party, allowing us to sample many of the teas before we [...]
Let the River Run
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Ezekiel 47:1-12) transports me to one of the unlikeliest feel good movie experiences of my life, when during the Christmas holidays of 1988, Kim and I went to the theater and came away with our hearts warmed, singing the praises of a successful Wall Street acquisition deal, of all [...]
Like the Water
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Psalm 104:1-18) transports me just outside of Mebane, to the home of my nine-year old nephew Francisco, whom I’ll be visiting this afternoon. It’s a great neighborhood of horse lovers, with lots of riding trails through the woods that surround all the homes. Behind Franco’s house is a beautiful [...]
Salt Cured Waters
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (2 Kings 2:19-22) transports me to the crazy world of anxiety dreams, this particular one filling my mind in the early hours this morning. Before going to be bed, several things conspired to provide the imagery. When I got to the ICU to spend a few hours with Carolyn [...]
Diagnosis: Mayhem
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (John 5:1-18) transports me to a weekend immersed in the turbulent waters of healing, waters that do not wait for a seasonal angelic visit, but continue to stir every day, including the Sabbath and Lord’s Day. Getting a glimpse into the deep pools of knowledge and skill that make [...]
Carolyn’s Real Work
Fellow Passengers: When I started reading this week’s Pastoral Passage* (I Corinthians 9:1-18) this morning, I was transported back a few years to a day I spent at la finca, a farm operated by Rosalva and Fidel, our good friends in Piedrecitas, Cuba. The Hebrew maxim Paul quoted, Don’t muzzle the ox that treads the [...]
Give ‘Em Hell
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Joel 3) transports me to a White House visit in the early 1950s, when five preachers got an audience with President Harry Truman, presented him with a Bible, and advocated for him to refrain from war in Korea. The preachers spoke about the prophet Isaiah’s call to beat our [...]
Show Me How It’s Done
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Proverbs 22) transports me to one of Steven Wright’s stand-up comedy routines, where he tells the audience about his unsuccessful attempt to end his life by jumping off a tall building. He wound up doing a triple back flip with several twists and turns, landed on his feet, and [...]
Make Love, Not War
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (Ruth 2-3) transports me to the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk, modern day Iraq, more than 3,500 years ago, when King Gilgamesh’s exploits became the stuff of legend and were eventually written down in the world’s oldest book, the set of poems entitled the Epic of Gilgamesh. Many are [...]
Harvest Ready
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (John 4:31-54) transports me to the sugar cane fields of Cuba in the spring of 1968, when the Castro government was ramping up efforts to increase export production and generate surplus money needed for industrialization. Their goal was to reach a 10 million ton harvest, known as la gran [...]
I’m Shocked, Shocked
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Pastoral Passage* (2 Corinthians 8:1-15) transports me to the 11th century Chartreuse Mountains in the Artois province of northern France, where a community of monks, the order of St. Bruno, devote themselves to prayer. Their motto is The cross is steady while the world is turning. Their turning world involved Pope [...]
Clear Water
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Isaiah 12) transports me to the day the folks from Clearwater Well Drilling came out to our house site to drill our well. That’s always an anxious time for folks building a house. You can’t be 100% sure they’ll find water, and if they do, how far they’ll have [...]
Secret Gardens
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Song of Songs 4) transports me to Misselthwaite Manor in Victorian era England, where an orphan girl, Mary Lennox, discovers the key to a secret walled garden. She also discovers Dickon, a Yorkshire boy from the moor who is something of an animal whisperer. The two of them spend [...]
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