Stained Concrete

Here where I pass
late in the day, late in the year,
trees overhang the walk
with branches all but bare,
the concrete stained
from wet-fall of leaves,
crumpled remainders
of the protean hour
when photosynthesis
surged in cell and vein,
as if things in motion
could counter gravity
then, and even now,
here where I pass.

Keep Us, Lord, Toward Bethlehem: A Prayer in Advent

On this rough back of time, we plod the days toward Bethlehem. How long, Lord, until we get there? What will we find when we arrive? In the aging of the year, daylight pales and stoops before the cold and dark. And the ride jars and coarsens after so many, many miles. We long for welcome, for kindness, for some sort of rest. Will you be there, Lord? How will we know? A child leads us, but to what and for what? We bear our many wanderings, our fears, and, yes, our fervent hopes. Keep us, Lord, toward Bethlehem, toward a tender dawn and a mercy incarnate. Amen.

Home Site

We have no special site for our home. We live in a modest townhouse complex amid comfortable single family homes in a suburban neighborhood in northern Virginia, the neighborhood being part of a growing county, and the county being part of the expanding metropolitan area around Washington, D.C. There seems no end of people, buildings, vehicles, and roads. Our home itself is at one end of a set of several townhouses, with other sets of townhouses close by, making up our little community within a larger, then that within a larger. The back of our home faces east; the front faces west; and the side which is the end of the unit faces south. Toward these three exposures we have ample windows. Just beyond our back doors and windows is a screen about five yards deep of trees and shrubs between us and the grounds of a day school for young children. There tulip poplars, beech, big tooth aspen, and hollies provide all manner of greens, yellows, and bare gray trunks and branches through the months. Then just beyond our front door and windows, along the townhouse complex's streets and parking areas and here and there in the little yards, is a scattering of maples, cherries, and oaks; and so more greens, yellows, and grays, as well as pinks and reds and browns, through the year. In all seasons, during the course of the days, especially when more sun and blue than clouds in the sky, both outside and inside we enjoy much light rising early in the back, moving in fullness around the side, and setting late in the front. We have no special site. Yet we do have these quanta of filtered light, exterior and interior, texturing with splendor the hours and days, the ordinary, if only we see.

Loving My Neighbor

God loves me individually. Yet God does not love me exclusively or primarily. God loves my neighbor as well. My neighbor is the person next to me, whether familiar or strange to me. My neighbor is also the person distant from me, for no one is distant from God. In God, everyone is actually or potentially my neighbor, whether near or far. As God does, does God want me to love my neighbor.

Sounds of Late Summer, Early Autumn

As late summer begins to turn perceptibly toward early autumn, yet before the entropy of the year cools this part of the universe to virtual stillness, the last strength of cicadas, katydids, and crickets, hidden in the tired greens and browns of leaves and grasses, swarms the blue air with vibrations, as if amplifying the otherwise unheard cosmic background radiation all around us.

Letting Go, Taking Hold

I have been reading in 2 Corinthians 4 and 5 of late. That reading and recent experiences in the extended life of which I am a part have freshly and deeply impressed me.

What we know is this life – laden with ambiguity. What we hope is the life to come – lifted with glory surpassing. As we ponder and approach our own passing, how will we let go what we know to take hold what we hope?

Were the Word of the Lord to Come

Ponder this phrase with which several of the prophetic works in the Old Testament begin, so simply, so directly: "The word of the Lord came to ...." There is an entire volume of theology, of sublime experience, to spilling over, in this unadorned declaration. It appeals and unnerves at one and the same time, as it should.