Over a series of informal office happy hours, I’ve apparently been preaching a personal gospel of freedom, community, and hard work. A colleague recorded some of my bon mots, condensed them into a list and shared with me. I figure I might as well share them here with with you, too. (I think they’re pretty good!) While …
Category Archives: Commentary
Are you well?
“How are you?” When was the last time you answered truthfully, thoughtfully? When was the last time I asked sincerely, curiously? This most civilized of greetings, it could be argued, has become nothing more than a marker of a privileged society in decline. The meaning and function stripped from the habit and tradition. Nalamdana means …
when a euphemism reveals itself
In these weeks between housesitting and subletting, the euphemisms are starting to compound. As would happen, the house-sit ended early and the sublet started late. C’est la vie. Carpe diem. I decided to seize the opportunity to have some free weeks to explore what-it-might-be-like-to-live-in-X. I started by inviting myself to stay in a friend’s spare …
guns and glitter
Salem has a new bar, and in its first week, I nearly got kicked out. It was late and I had been exploring new tipples, but neither had much to do with the reprimand. Friendliness, I’d say, is what I was most guilty of. When the girlfriend of the gentleman seated on the barstool next …
beautiful feet
I’ve never thought much of feet. Kind of gross, actually. Intricate and intimate, they bear the marks of a life’s journey. Generally, though, I try to avert my eyes. This Holy Week, however, I couldn’t help but stare. The weekend preceding I attended a retreat on “Hope in the Encounter with Evil in our Times” …
an internet fast
I’ve been on a bit of an internet fast this week. While I’ve long reasoned that it’s probably not healthy to take my computer to bed with me as I’ve often done, my reasons for this week’s fast are more practical than self-sacrficial. My current domicile doesn’t have wi-fi, and I don’t want to pay …
making fires
I always imagined I’d spend a harsh, wandering, epiphanic winter in a Parisian garrett, burning the furniture to fend off frostbite, breathing the special French carcinogenic air, and celebrating the angst of not being able to eat or communicate. That story’s common enough, though. Therefore, since returning (again!) to Salem in the new year after …
. . . and to all a new birth
It’s easy at this time of year to be lulled into the numbness of familiarity. Quirinius’s census and roundyoungvirgins start to merge into a nostalgic miasma of non-meaning. In counterpoint, therefore, I offer this Christmas Day alternative imagery. Jesus’s birth is also recorded in the Qur’an and has a completely different soundtrack. Maybe next …
scandalizing society
When you live as I do in one of America’s oldest and once wealthiest cities, opportunities to participate in events rich in heritage and custom are ample. Case in point: The Hamilton Hall Christmas Ball. Held annually since, we think, the 20s, but surely inspired by similar events dating back to the Hall’s earliest nineteenth-century …
the wrong side of the hose
Yesterday, my denomination of birth, the Southern Baptist Convention, elected its first African American president. For an organization that was born for and by slave owners in the pre-Civil War years, that’s a pretty big deal. Though perhaps not as big a deal as many would like it to be. True, the Convention has made …
Goat anyone? 