a prophetic voice-

Went to our public library today to return some books on CD and to pick up a few more, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a beautiful Christmas tree and an amazing garland, both created from recovered recyclables by a wonderful environmental artist, Bryant Holsenbeck, another truly creative  artist who is using His work not only to beautify a local space but to raise our awareness about caring for the environment. This Thanksgiving 2014 I am especially thankful for  all artists, regardless of their medium- paints, music, dance, theater, recyclables, etc.- and for the incredible gift the arts are in our lives. What would we ever do without them and the beauty they create, the stories they tell?  

"To everything there is a season..." so says the writer of Ecclesiastes in a well-known, oft-quoted passage. And I usually trust that to be true. But then there is my Christmas cactus...which for the nine or so years I have had it has faithfully and stubbornly bloomed about four weeks before the aforementioned time...bursting forth in all its glory at Thanksgiving. Every year. Without fail. As I looked at it today, counting the many blooms and the many more buds- in a few more days it will be covered with blossoms- I found myself thinking about this whole "season" thing. We use that saying to comfort ourselves, I think, with the notion, the belief, that things unfold as they should, when they should, in the overall scheme of things. And in the world of nature, at least, that is most often true. Summer follows spring follows winter follows fall, and so it goes, year after year...a promise of sorts to which we tightly hold and in which we find great

  Nearly a month since I last wrote here...a month marked with so many internal debates...with much soul-searching regarding the ways in which my state...this place which I have called home for the last nearly-30 years continues to respond to what was good news on October 11 for so many. I speak, of course, of the judgment handed down in the U.S District Court by Justice Max Coburn that Amendment One, passed last spring, banning same- sex marriages, was unconstitutional.  The soul-searching has come, not because I disagree. Quite the contrary. I was among those overjoyed by this step... quite a giant step...toward justice and equality for all people in North Carolina. The soul-searching has come as I have wrestled with how to respond in a loving, caring, Christian way to those who clearly do not agree... to those who find the possibility of same-sex couples marrying a threat of sorts, be it to their biblical understanding or their moral principles or- I'm not s