12 Nov 2014

Raspberry Crumbles, and Other Forms of Hospitality

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  It’s not every day your husband brings home a raspberry crumble. Mine did, a couple of Sundays ago, when he returned from a visitation at a church where there’s apparently a woman who remembered how much he liked the raspberry crumble she made the last time he came there. Now that’s service, don’t you think?  And it’s especially heartwarming, I might add, that she made a WHOLE raspberry crumble, for him to take home (to be shared, say, with … Read More
13 Jan 2014

How Do You Make, How Do You Take Your Community?

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Is there a sure-fire way to tell the real thing from an imitation?  And what allows an imitation to be acceptable or even preferable?  When it comes to fulfilling our natural desire for community, who is to say if one kind is more genuine or life-giving than another? Some months after advising me to lay off the salt, my doctor also told me to cut out sugar and all white foods—wait, I think cauliflower is allowed — as much as possible. … Read More
27 May 2013

Time to Go

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Years ago, my mother liked to tell the story about a teenage neighbor of ours who needed to give her handicapped mother quite a lot of help.  Once when her mother was learning to drive a specially equipped car, she instructed her daughter not to do anything for her, saying, “Pretend you’re not even here.”   A few minutes later, though, the mother got into difficulty and was really struggling.  From the back seat the daughter finally piped up with “So am … Read More
20 Mar 2013

March in Limbo

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Houses have a stay-in-one-place, rooted quality to them.  Life, on the other hand, is mostly made up of transitions, mood changes, shifts large and small.  Or at least this is how it looks to me from my current perspective.  And my current perspective is no doubt only enhanced by the particular season we’re in now. Has there ever been a better example of a limbo time than the whole month of March?   Yesterday, the poem of the day on “The … Read More