A Prayer for Christmas Week The child, the little lamb Come into the darkness with light God of the margins, silent But moving on this joyous night Secrets of heaven revealed The shepherd faces filled with awe Angels appear in starry field I believe what the poor man saw The child, the little lamb Might I hold the Son of […]

Parricide by Jon Trott Oh, her eyes close down upon it Moan escapes her parted lips No lover’s hands in this harsh place The silent infant finally slips And in his face I see myself Yet not myself as it would prove The blood, the pain, the boy’s first cry The peril’s promise, the Shade of love The awful risks […]

Find out things. Sometimes use a mirror. Sometimes use the window. Sometimes pace the floor. And sometimes walk out the door. Pick up what someone else left. Put down what someone else claimed was important. Pray to understand. Work at understanding, yes, til your muscles ache. Welcome mystery then pester it with a child’s “why”? And as you grow older, […]

One day, without much fanfare, my Mother handed me a beautiful leather-covered book. Its cover was dark blue, and the softly brushed leather embedded with gold letters. I read it. Stunned, I read it again. Though I cannot now put my hand to that book, its message is repeated below. I hope I still have eyes to see, ears to […]

I’ll love you… IF. I’ll love you… WHEN. I’ll love you if you think like me. I’ll love you when you give me what I want. I’ll love you if you believe what I believe — no more, no less. I’ll love you if you validate my experiences at the expense of yours. I’ll love you when you deny your […]

It felt more emotional than I’d expected… personal, even. Nelson Mandela is dead. A great, great man has passed out of this world. And I am reminded again of all the history South Africa and the United States share regarding both racial injustice and the heroes such injustice forged. Mr. Mandela was South Africa’s George Washington, Martin Luther King, and […]

All self-defined truths are not true. Much Evangelical commentary has been made against a culture where tolerance says all self-narratives should be treated respectfully… the Evangelical response is that this is an illogical and deceptive idea. Cultural “tolerance” for all narratives is too often, say these critics, equated with acceptance of all narratives as equally true — an idea which […]

Virginity checks, according to CNN and Amnesty International, were conducted against women taking part in March 9 pro-democracy protests in Egypt. Notes Amnesty: When army officers violently cleared Tahrir Square on 9 March – the day after International Women’s Day – 18 women were detained, beaten, given electric shocks, of which 17 were then subjected to strip searches, forced to […]

FOX News gave Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher, massive amounts of airtime. U. S. Senator Rand Paul and FOX pundit Sean Hannity praised Bundy’s stance against the federal government. (Never mind the federal government owns the land Mr. Bundy grazes his cattle on, which is what the dispute is about, and has owned the land for generations.) The entire conservative […]

  [This article, with a photo gallery at article’s end, is part II of a Planned III part series; Part I deals with Chelsea Hotel’s construction in the 1920s and what happened next.] Through the 1930s into the first two-thirds of the 1960s Chelsea Hotel, despite its small studio apartments, was not just home to single adults but entire families. […]