Emmett Till, ‘Strange Fruit,’ and the stench of political mendacity

“Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root / Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.” When Billie Holiday sang those words in 1939 she evoked the forlorn pain of black America, living constantly in the shadow of the …

Donnie and the search for a few good dogs

There has been a lot of talk lately of loyalty. With the White House post-impeachment purge a few weeks behind us, and the installation, in place of the dismissed, of unquestioning loyalists, it’s worth pausing to ask: What is loyalty? And what is it not? Loyalty is, or should be, an easily understood virtue. It …

Follow me to my new site at Emmaus Path

...And also continue to follow me here! To all of you who've been following along with my writing over the last several years, Thank you! I've finally taken a step I've been meaning to for some time, and created a separate site, at EmmausPath.church, where all my faith-based writing can be collected without being mixed …

The uncomfortable path of truth

Delivered for Noon Prayer, 2.19.2020, at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Enid, Okla., in observance of the Feast of Frederick Douglass (20 February). “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” That line, from our very brief Gospel reading today, is one of the most popular quotes from Scripture. But, what …

The not-so-hidden dangers of school vouchers

“The public school is the greatest discovery made by man.” Horace Mann, son of a poor farmer who rose to Congress on the strength of his education, uttered those words in the early 19th century because he realized the truth of what Plato expounded roughly 22 centuries before him — education is the cornerstone of …

Replacing laws of oppression with the law of Love

C. F. Andrews and Gandhi Laws. As humans, we love laws. The ancestors of our faith had 613 commandments in Mosaic Law. That was a lot, and it was, in fact, impossible to comply with them all. We’ve come a long way since then. Today, if you wish to have a copy of the U.S. …

Listening to Creation

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the …

Be the bridge of reconciliation

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation." 2 Corinthians 5:17-18 One of the first people I met in nursing home ministry was Bruce, …

We should honor courage, dump cowardice, regardless of party

There is no greater measure of character than how someone acts when conscience points against the winds of popularity, and all they have to gain is harsh criticism and personal loss. Sen. Mitt Romney faced that challenge this week, and proved himself uniquely up to the test. The backlash against Romney, including jabs from the …

Good news — You may now be dismissed

This past Sunday was the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord — recalling Joseph and Mary presenting the infant Jesus at the Temple (Luke 2:22-40), to dedicate him, as their firstborn, to God. I love this feast day because it includes one of my favorite passages from Scripture, the Nunc dimittis, or Song of …