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Intro to Daily Passages
Find out what the Daily Passages blog is all about, and to see an outline of the sources for each weekday's posting.
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
Austerity and Abundance
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 9:1-17) transports me back ten years or so to the emergence of a new church, Ecclesia Baptist in Fairview. Like many start-up Baptist churches, we were a product of the “multiply by dividing” principle, with the core group comprised largely of people who had been wounded and disappointed [...]
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Curative Caprice
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (2 Kings 20) transports me to my seminary dorm room in Whitsitt Hall, where my first year roommate and I regularly found amusement calling up Pat Robertson’s 700 Club telethon and asking the phone bank person some deep theological question that had emerged from professor Frank Tupper’s class that [...]
Kowtowing to Christ
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 8:40-56) transports me to Lhasa, Tibet, where on any given day you’ll find hundreds of pilgrims prostrating themselves in prayer in front of one of the several sites considered holy to Buddhists. One of the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims set to reach Lhasa this year is eleven-year-old [...]
What the Bleep Do We Believe?
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 8:22-39) transports me a 2006 DVD-viewing experience, where I endured Marlee Matlin overdramatizing the role of Amanda, a grouchy, dispirited photographer in Portland who wants to make it clear to the world that her anti-depressants aren’t working. There are only a few movies that have left me downright [...]
The Law of Three
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Psalm 107) transports me back almost 250 years to the Duchy of Württemberg in southwestern Germany, where a good Lutheran boy named Georg entered Stuttgart’s Gymnasium Illustre, which was what they called the k-12 prep school back in the day. Georg didn’t have a lot of time for gym [...]
The New Math of Faith
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (Deuteronomy 28) transports me to High School senior year math class, a pre-calc course with Coach Carroll, who took the derivatives and integrals he instructed on the blackboard as seriously as he did the two-handed backhands and spin serves he instructed on the tennis court. It seems unlikely now, [...]
Going Green
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 8:1-21) transports me a spring day at the Shorehan Hotel, Washington DC, 1968, when William Gaud, the US AID Administrator (the head of the State Department’s Agency for International Development) was speaking to a gathering of the Society for International Development. It was in this speech that Gaud [...]
Claiming the Call to Clamor
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Psalm 68) transports me to a night of noisy clamor at Gashes Creek Baptist Church, summer of 1983, when I learned how much commotion the simple notion of women in ministry could create. I was youth minister, and had not been apprised of the conflict that had emerged in [...]
Sacred Sociobiology
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (Genesis 38) transports me to two traditional Southern Baptist Churches, one in Brewton, Alabama in the 1930s, the second in Lawton, Oklahoma in the 1960s. Each of these churches saw a child born and raised in their midst, professing faith and receiving the rite of baptism, learning the sacred [...]
Sinning Much, Loving Much
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 7:36-50) transports me to a Sunday afternoon at Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, July of 1989. It was a high and holy day as my pastor Steve Shoemaker and my father-in-law Ed Christman joined a holy host of phenomenal women, including Paula Roberts, Tina Pippin, Holli Rainwater, [...]
Collective Soul
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Jeremiah 31:15-17) transports me to 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington DC, where the Criminal Investigative Division of the FBI maintains its files and analyzes violent crime in our country. People who staff this office are the ones who have crunched the numbers and can tell us that over the [...]
Pushing Up Phlox
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Psalm 30) transports me to the cemetery of Gashes Creek Baptist, where I made my annual walk this afternoon to catch the splendor of April’s purple and pink phlox creeping around the concrete monuments dating from the late 19th century. The markers all tell short stories of their own [...]
Defiant Ones
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (I Kings 17:8-24) transports me to December of 1958, when Americans were going to the drive-in to see The Defiant Ones on the big screen, watching Maverick on the small screen, and shaking their booties to La Bamba on the radio. Those who spent their mornings scanning the New [...]
A Marathon of Faith
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 7:11-35) transports me to the aftermath of the terror attack at the finish line of the Boston marathon, where 3 lives were lost and scores more were wounded. The primary and secondary injuries suffered include lost limbs, ruptured eardrums, and blinding shrapnel wounds. Tertiary injuries include traumatic brain [...]
Yes Means Yes
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Pastoral Passage* (2 Corinthians 1:15-22) transports me back to my favorite Simpsons episode, One Fish Two Fish Blowfish Bluefish, where we find the family in the kitchen on a Thursday night, meatloaf night (as it was, is now, and ever shall be, Lisa recites in despair). Homer watches the main dish [...]
Heartworm
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Isaiah 1) transports me to what we longingly refer to as the “orchard” below our house, next to our garden. Our humble orchard consists of 4 heirloom apple trees. Today was the first day for buds to start emerging, and thus begins a 3-week period of holding our breath, [...]
Mountain-Top Experiences
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Psalm 24) transports me to a worship service at the Jubilee Community, circa 1999, when Kim was on staff as children’s minister. Worship at Jubilee has always been uplifting and engaging, if not downright entertaining, based as it is on the theological bent of creation spirituality. You can always [...]
Righteous Ungodliness
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (2 Chronicles 25) transports me to a mid to late 90s place that I can’t for the life of me remember, nor the occasion, but I suspect it was some kind of Christian music festival or denominational meeting. What is indelibly etched in my memory is who I met [...]
Praying Like a Pagan
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 6:39-7:10) transports me to the scenic and sprawling campus of First Baptist Church, Greenville, SC, where I spent this past weekend in the annual meeting of the Alliance of Baptists. Along with reports on missions and ministry partnerships, recognitions of endorsed chaplains and pastors, advocacy statements on drone [...]
A Coming Out Party
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Pastoral Passage* (Revelation 18) transports me to a hell-fire and brimstone camp meeting, where a spirit-filled pentecostal preacher takes the stage at the concluding chorus of Revive Us Again to hammer out dire apocalyptic warnings found in the text for the night, Revelation 18. Some predictable words punctuate the sweating preacher’s [...]
Twits of Faith
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Isaiah 5:8-23) transports me to England’s Hurlingham Park, January 20, 1970, where John Cleese is providing color commentary and play by play for the 127th running of the Upper Class Twit of the Year competition. You join us just as the competitors are running out onto the field on [...]
A Calamitous Faith
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Psalm 32) transports me to the nostalgic tv land of 1963. Having already taken a trip down this memory lane this week, watching General Hospital’s 50th anniversary special, I thought it would be worth a Google to see what other network fare my family was watching back in the [...]
Everybody Knows the Secret
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (I Samuel 4) transports me to the Dean Smith Center in May of 1992. One of the teenagers from our church in Stoneville, Brad Talley, convinced me to get my sermon prepared earlier in the week so I could take him on Saturday night to see one of our [...]
Double Feature
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 6:20-38) transports me to the Blockbuster movie rental store in the summer of 1990, in the D section of the alphabetized drama aisle. Some recent conversations about race relations in our church probably prompted me to rent two movies that spoke to the topic. I got my Goobers [...]
Getting in the Way on Easter
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (Daniel 6) transports me back ten years to a desert highway near the ancient Babylonian city of Rutba in the early days of the United States’ ill-conceived invasion of Iraq. Leading up to the war, members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams traveled to the country, seeking to fulfill their [...]
Politicos, Prisoners, and the Pope
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Psalm 82) transports me back to Good Friday of the year 33, Common Era, the day when an innocent man was executed between two thieves. This crucifixion, administered by Roman guards under the authority of the self-proclaimed god of that land, Tiberius Caesar, led to the formation of a [...]
Situational (Scouting) Ethics
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (Exodus 1) transports me to a candlelight ceremony at the Oakley Methodist Church Fellowship Hall, circa 1971. It was neither Holy Week nor Advent nor did it involve any other kind of religious ritual; I and my fellow Boy Scout Troop 22 greenhorns were getting promoted into the rank [...]
Vigilante Peace and Justice
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 6:1-19) transports me to the night time streets of Gotham City, where a caped crusader can be counted on to take the law into his own hands and hunt down the various villainous thugs threatening the public safety. While I can appreciate the talents of figures like the [...]
Fine as Wine
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Pastoral Passage* (Acts 16:22-34) transports me to the confines of Shawshank Prison, where Andy Dufresne redeems his time by offering words of dangerous hope to his fellow inmates, before eventually escaping to freedom. The Steven King novel and movie pack quite a wallop in this case study of freedom and responsibility, [...]
How Absurd!
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Ecclesiastes 9:1-10) transports me back again to the 1940s city of Oran, Algeria. I’ve long been fascinated with this north African city, largely because of the stories my dad told me of the time he spent there in WWII. And I’m periodically drawn back to the works of Algerian [...]
Unearthing Stories of Peace
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (2 Kings 6:8-23) transports me to a meeting in the home of my college ethics professor, Page Lee, back in the spring of 1984. Dr. Lee invited students in the religion department and others who had an interest to come and spend time in conversation with the college’s visiting [...]
The Force of Levity
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 5:27-39) transports me to the sanctuary of La Primera Iglesia Bautista in Matanzas, Cuba, where I have been several times over the past few years to facilitate leadership and team-building workshops for the staff of the church and the Kairos Center. Even though times are incredibly tough right [...]
San Francisco, A Giant in Faith
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Isaiah 22) transports me 800 years back in time to a legendary meeting at Rome’s Lateran Basilica between the namesake of the newest vicar of Christ, San Francesco, and the Pope of the Day, Innocent III. It was an age of intense Christian-Muslim tensions and violence, of gross materialism, [...]
Vetting the Authorities
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Proverbs 29) transports me to a civil war battleground that has only recently emerged. It’s not likely to be the arena for re-enactors in blue and gray to face off, though; it’s a battle between different shades of red. It was David Bossie, president of the arch-conservative Citizens United [...]
How Do They Do That?
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (Numbers 17) transports me to the home of professor James Dodding in Garstang, UK, where Kim and I were visiting two years ago. Mr. Dodding is Kim’s mentor in theatre work; he retired back to his home town after a storied career teaching and acting and directing at Wake [...]
Striking a Pose
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 5:12-26) transports me to yesterday’s Sunday afternoon mountain cookout, with my cousin Charlie and some of his family. I always enjoy time with Charlie; he’s one of the best storytellers I know, and I can always count on hearing something new. This Sunday, he was remembering his time [...]
Caught in the Driftnet
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Habakkuk 1) transports me to the high pelagic seas, where industrial fishing enterprises are continuing to employ their driftnets to capture our Friday night chef’s special at the Bonefish Grill, orange roughy or Chilean seabass or bluefin tuna, with the gillnets also capturing quite a bit of by-catch (unwanted [...]
Dragnet
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Ecclesiastes 9:10-18) transports me to a city, described by the sergeant with badge 714 as one of the biggest in the United States. Spreads out in all four directions like a broadloom rug. Two million people, almost a million kids. The people have tried to plan for ‘em. They [...]
Star Fish
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (Genesis 1: 20-31) transports me to the big screen where some of the biggest name stars are cast in their normal lead and supporting roles, but despite their fame you wouldn’t be able to recognize a single one of them, at least you wouldn’t recognize their faces. The list [...]
Fish, Fish, Got What I Wish
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 5:1-11) transports me to the patio of Sila Reyna’s home in La Vallita, Cuba. Sila is pastor of our partner church, Iglesia Bautista Rios de Agua Viva, Rivers of Living Water Baptist Church. Sila’s patio is often the place for neighborhood children to congregate and play games, show [...]
Exorcising the Body
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 4:31-44) transports me to the Friday night closing service for a youth group retreat, August 1983. A group of Presbyterian teenagers are circling up for the emotional end of retreat closure and blessing from their group leader. These are not your run of the mill Presbyterians; they are [...]
Gourmet of Grace
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Pastoral Passage* (James 2:1-13) transports me to the first time Kim and I experienced 5-star fine dining, at the Bristol Bar and Grille in the Highlands of Louisville, KY, on the night of our first date in the fall of 1985. It had some local flavor, like the famous hot brown, [...]
No More Vengeance
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Isaiah 61) transports me to A Thousand Splendid Suns that hide behind the war-torn walls of Kabul and the failed state of Afghanistan. If you haven’t read Khaled Hosseini’s terribly sad sequel to The Kite Runner, I highly recommend it (if you have the stomach for a well of [...]
Sunsets and Liberation
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (I Kings 17) transports me to a deeply impoverished and mud-plagued suburban slum in Brazil, mid 1960s, where Father Pedro Arrupe of the Society of Jesus had gone on a trip from Spain to celebrate mass. The church in this favela was a patched together, rickety structure, dirt floor, [...]
Choosing Sides
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 4: 15-30) transports me first to the Paint Creek Mine War of 1912, in Kanawah County, West Virginia, where a 12 year old girl starts penning a poem while her father is out on strike. She sets it to the tune of an old hymn, Lay the Lily [...]
Lion on the Prowl
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Pastoral Passage* (I Peter 5) transports me to a service-learning leadership group I was facilitating around 7 or 8 years ago. The theme for the day’s reflection was courage, and the group members had engaged in an introductory hands-on activity with clay, shaping their lump of clay into something that represented [...]
Civil Unrest
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (Genesis 4) transports me to what anthropologist Jared Diamond calls the worst mistake in human history, circa 10,000 years ago. That’s the approximate birthdate of the agricultural revolution and the ensuing emergence of civil society, aka “civilization.” As Diamond argues, this revolution led to one thing and then another, [...]
Tempted and Tried
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Primary Passage* (Luke 4:1-14) transports me to Detroit, aka Motor City, aka Motown, where, in 1961, on the steps of Hitsville, U.S.A. studios, a group of five young men are on the spot to come up with a name for their r & b group, after discovering that the name they [...]
Like Father Like Son
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Poetry Passage* (Psalm 44) transports me to the Baked Potato jazz club in Los Angeles, circa 2004, where I added the name Laboriel to the long list of musical parent-children collaborations: von Trapp, Carter, Staples, Partridge, et al. I had gone to LA to attend a grantee meeting at UCLA, with [...]
Footnotes of Faith
Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (I Chronicles 1) transports me to Selma, Alabama, late 90s, where our group of Freedom Bus Riders gathered at a fine dining establishment, called, oddly enough, White-Force Cottage. J.L. Chestnut, the first African American attorney in Selma, was our special guest for the evening, prepared to tell stories of [...]
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