Becky and I just returned from a road trip to Memphis, Tennessee, where we enjoyed a wonderful post-Christmas visit with our daughter, son-in-law, and most-amazing-in-the-whole-world 11-month old grandson. From mid-morning on the drive down to early afternoon on the trip back, we were south of the Mason-Dixon line – a few miles of Maryland and West Virginiaand then a long north to south (and south to north) though the mountains of western Virginia and finally Tennessee from the northeast corner to the southwest corner (and southwest corner to northeast corner), nearly 500 miles of the Volunteer state.  Bucksnort at Exit 152 on I-40 west of Nashville is our favorite place name of the whole long trip.

There is that charm thing about the American South. From convenience store workers to restaurant wait staff, hotel clerks to the members of Riveroaks Presbyterian Church, we encountered nothing but “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am” and “How y’all doin’?” as if they really cared about how we all were doing.

The line, of course, is that Southern charm is a mile wide and an inch deep.  Maybe so, I still like it. Even if the waiter doesn’t really care how we all are doing, it was nice to be asked. Continue reading →

Two Sundays ago, our LPC Choir presented its annual Christmas cantata. This year’s, “The Mystery and the Majesty,” was especially good, I thought. You can view it here if you’d like.

Over the years I have become the default narrator for the cantatas, and I count it a great honor. More than that, Holly Waterson, our amazing choir director, trusts me to revise the narration as I wish. I usually wish. Let me just say that the people who write church cantatas are typically better musicians and lyricists than wordsmiths or theologians. Continue reading →

Up before dawn, I leave the house with a sweatshirt over a t-shirt, wind pants, and, this time of year, a pair of gloves and a fleece ear band.  I’m still bleary eyed when I hit the streets of the borough for a little interval training – intervals of walking and running, four miles of it and then I’m ready for the day.  Some mornings I ought to punch the time clock; it’s a good time for sermon or lesson planning, untangling the knots of a difficult pastoral care situation.  Other mornings I just plod along and not a thought worth remembering passes through my mind.

The mornings were cold early this week, 24 degrees on Monday and 22 on Tuesday.  My sweatshirt and wind pants are hardly a stout defense against the chill, but at about mile one the internal furnace that is the human body if fully fired and I begin to think about something other than being cold. Continue reading →

The day before Thanksgiving columnist David French wrote a piece that appeared in the National Review Online.  The headline caught my eye, “For Reasons Good and Sad, Thanksgiving Is Now Our Greatest Holiday.”

French wrote about our Thanksgiving heritage from the Pilgrims to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. He spoke of the unifying power of giving thanks. Immigrant or native, young or old, creed or no creed, we give thanks. I appreciated his thoughts.  His good reasons for Thanksgiving being our greatest holiday were good.  But the sad reason, he said, was the decline of Christmas, our once greatest holiday: Continue reading →

The leaves have finally fallen, the sky has turned gray, and the air is cold.  It is late fall in eastern Pennsylvania. This is the way it is supposed to be.

Sunday marks the beginning of Advent, this season largely forgotten save by some of the churches and maybe a calendar or a wreath of candles in fewer and fewer homes. We seem more taken by an elf on the shelf than by a call to let all mortal flesh keep silence; with fear and trembling to stand.  We have no idea what it might mean to ponder nothing earthly minded.

There will be time to sit before the fire on the hearth and to enjoy the glow of the lit evergreen in the corner of the living room.  Today, not yet Advent, still autumn, the bleak late fall reminds us for what Advent calls us to wait.  We need more than the warmth of the fire, the glow of the lights, or whatever playful delight the game about the elf on the shelf brings.  In fact, our world is a world of sad and lowly plains.  Many in our world live “beneath life’s crushing load, their forms are bending low, they toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow.”

Until recent years, Advent, with its deep purple vestments, was considered a season of penitence.  Where it is now much practiced, the emphasis has turned to expectant, even joyful waiting.

The bleak late fall speaks more of penitence.  Something needs to change, and, to borrow the poet’s phrase I’ve already corrupted, bleak midwinter comes long before the spring. Continue reading →