Potluck (no Jello!)

I got my first symptoms on Sunday, August 20th, the last day of our four day celebration of my mom’s 85th birthday in New York City. It was a long flight home with what I hoped was just a bad cold. By the next day I tested positive for Covid. It is the weirdest dang Read more

A younger co-worker of mine at the food pantry came to work one day wearing new Nikes. When I complimented him he replied a bit sheepishly, saying that his girlfriend bought them for him, telling him, “you deserve them after the way you take care of us.” Though I expressed appreciation out loud, my thoughts Read more

I admit that I used to wrinkle my nose at contemporary Christian music. It was too emotional and expressed a relationship with Jesus that was far too intimate for me. At the same time, I loved Gospel music, including contemporary Gospel music. Eventually I made myself look at that dichotomy: loving Gospel music sung mostly Read more

I love this country. I do. Our upstart, still young, nation trying democracy at an unprecedented breadth and depth. A nation with the oldest active, written Constitution, which guarantees freedoms unimaginable in many corners of the world. A nation of 50 million immigrants, with more still arriving. A nation of citizens and refugees and want-to-be Read more

Though I grew up in the country, when I came out, twenty years ago, living in a city made the most sense to me. Once out of the closet, I knew I wouldn’t go back in, and I didn’t want to feel the need to check my surroundings before being myself. I think it was Read more

Among the delights of observing both nature and people at Multnomah Falls are the spontaneous, happy cartwheels expertly thrown down by preteen girls. I’m so happy, I could just spin through the air! Such joy! Read more

There are 50 million immigrants in the United States. Read more

I moved to Portland in February 2016. The past seven years have been tumultuous. I’ve lived in three homes, in two cities; worked for four companies; lost a cat; gained a dog; had my job eliminated by a company I helped start; was unemployed for seven months; worked at an Amazon warehouse the summer before Read more

Perhaps it would have gone better if I had danced. I was at SUNY Potsdam, in northern NY for a summer program teaching high school students from the Akwesasne (Mohawk) tribe. If you plot the five tribes of the Iroquois, six, when the Tuscarora joined, their territories roughly resemble vertical stripes across NY, with the Read more

Sometimes when I look at a cherry tree, with its crazy abundance, I imagine God creating beauty in a ridiculously well-supplied workshop, humming “Love Divine“ absentmindedly while working. “Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heav’n to earth come down…. dee, dee, dee-da-dee….” The creation credo posted on the workshop wall could only have been: Read more