I’m visiting my best friend — my ‘bff,’ as my students say. So far, we’ve crammed weeks of being together doing what we love into the six days we’ve had together. We’ve gone to pick up berries (blue, black- and rasp-, not to mention Oregon kotatas). We’ve had tea, Tillamook ice cream, and tonight is…

Two friends who attend my church — or at least what I think of as ‘my’ church, despite not attending it w/ any degree of frequency! — lost their nephew today. Lost him in a pool of dark red blood on a white concrete driveway, the victim of a drive-by shooting. Yesterday his father sat…

Sometimes, the heart is incapable of filling futher. It can’t even break, it’s so full. The Quakers, when things are very hard, hold you in the light. And for each of us, ‘the light’ may be different. But this week, I am trying hard to hold the many victims of the Aurora tragedy in the…

My sister-in-law reads Biblical Greek. Not the New Testament kind, but the kind that the really old parts of the Jewish & Christian Bible are written in. She’s a Presbyterian minister, which is one of the few ways (that I know of, at least) to come by such arcane skills. Here’s what she told me…

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