Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all. – William Wordsworth “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early […]
What’s the most important and costly conversation Americans aren’t having? According to a group of medical and wellness leaders, it’s how we want to die. If 75% of Americans say they want to die at home, why do only 25% of them do? As a consequence of the United States’ unique profit-first health care, religious […]
The plan was to have a fairly traditional (for me) observance of the Easter Triduum, the three day period between Maundy Thursday and Easter that recalls the passion, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus as recorded in the canonical gospels. Nothing too disruptive. . . Nevertheless, true to form, I didn’t exactly stick to plan. […]
After a lifetime of not observing Purim, I made hamantaschen twice this year! Purim is a Jewish holiday that commemorates Queen Esther’s saving of the Jewish people from Haman, who was planning to kill all the Jews. The story is recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther, with contemporary overtones I can’t help but notice. […]
“You hate nothing you have made.” Since 1549, Thomas Cranmer in the opening line of his [modernized] Collect for Lent in the Book of Common Prayer has been reminding us that the act of creation is actually a labor of love. Serendipitously for my ongoing project of disrupting holidays, Ash Wednesday, the first day of […]
Finally, reclining on my luxury Mexican coach en route direct to Ciudad de Mexico, I’m feeling much better about how this little pet project is playing out. After what I hope will be the saddest Christmas Eve of my life (completely self-inflicted I completely realize), everything’s been looking up, since those three Alabama state troopers […]
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. “This is the day the Lord has made, let […]
