Season of Preparation
Let's at least go through the motions, lighting candles, folding open paper windows, hanging greens and singing songs of ancient expectation in..
More Stories from this Author
Nothing For Christmas
That’s what I’m asking for this year. That’s how I’m responding to my spouse, siblings, kids and grandkids too who, once again,..
Seasonal decor
We bring them out again, these relics of a score of Advents Past, unwind with reverent gentleness the yellowed tissue bindings, and..
When Joseph Came to Bethlehem (Joseph’s carol)
When Joseph came to Bethlehem His life seemed all awry. His fair young bride was great with child He knew not how..
General Assembly: Looking Back (poem)
John Calvin would be lost here. John Knox would be hard put to find a place to rest his shaggy head, and..
G.A. – a poem by J. Barrie Shepherd
Hard to believe at times that we’re all in the same church, what with the long, sad, multitude of ways we stand..
Holy Week
These weeks between the ashes and the lilies demand hardly any getting used to. The lurking guilt has ever been there, tight..
Orienting-Lent
The eastering I look for
On the eleventh day of Christmas …
it's getting pretty late,
at the bottom of the driveways
the naked trees await,
the tinsel has been vacuumed
from the carpet and the chair,
Mid (Holy) Week
Was there a Weary Wednesday led into Maundy Thursday? A day when all that went before the palm branches and plotting, all..
In the Fast Lane
Slowing down, this holy season,
may be the way to go.
Letting go, at least an hour here
and there, of that wheel
James and John
Lent 4 ¢ Introduction
One of the most fascinating and rewarding aspects of being an author is the varied nature of the responses one receives from readers. In recent years I have learned from these that my two earlier Faces... books, Faces at the Manger and Faces at the Cross, were found to be helpful, not only in private, personal devotion life, but also, on occasion, in public worship. Creative pastors, and lay people also, have adapted the musings of the various Faces as dramatic monologues, or even, in one college in Canada, into a whole Christmas Eve service. This week's meditation, in the persons of James and John, might possibly be adapted (into two voices perhaps) for such use on Transfiguration Sunday.
November Dusk
The Eve of Christ the King
Gray, fading, year-worn light
portends an absence of anticipation.
No consideration, even, as to whether
or not it will begin again after
the evident onset of the dark....