From my front porch, I can look to the left and see two buildings. The first, just down the street, belongs to a young woman who lives on her own. I have only met her once, when passing out cookies to the neighborhood. After offering her cookies, she cocked one eyebrow, looked at me like I was Anthony Weiner trying to get her Twitter handle, and said, “Why?” I replied that we just wanted to be good neighbors. As her expression softened, she said, “It’s just that this is the first time anyone has done something like this for me since I started living on my own.” Continue reading
Category Archives: Stories
Sometimes I like to talk through stories, because it’s easier to get to the heart of the matter.
The War on Sanity, Part 2
In a small town somewhere in Midwest America, 
a little girl used to like to play on the merry-go-round with a little boy from a few streets over. Their parents would bring them by the park on Saturdays, and the two would play for hours until it was time for dinner. As the children’s friendship grew (based on nothing more than a shared love of dizziness), the parents likewise began to strike up a casual relationship. Continue reading
The Day I Met Jesus in a Bar
His name wasn’t really Jesus, it was Jerry. And I didn’t meet him in a bar; he just took me there after he fed several dozen homeless people in the park, offered them Communion, and then healed a sick man. Ok, he didn’t really heal him, but he got the police to contact a medic who came and took care of the guy. When he’s not passing out sandwiches in the park, he is hanging out with the marginalized of society, those who have been burned or disillusioned by the church, the homeless and the bartenders. You can understand why I got the two mixed up at first.
5 Stories in 5 Minutes
It turns out that graduate schools have not yet received the gospel of the Common App, that holiest of 21st century technology that made my undergraduate application process seem like a sacramental experience – at least in comparison to this toenail-ripping tedium that is sucking every creative life force from my fingertips. In other words, I am sorry for not updating the blog recently, but all of my writing has been devoted to crafting responses to about twenty different essay prompts on divinity school applications.
As such, I thought we could play a little game of catch-up, rapid fire style. Here are the disjointed and mangled thoughts that have crept into my head over the past week and a half of experiences at my UM church in Birmingham:
Real Life Beautitudes
“Mint Ting-a-Ling.” “Piece of Cake.” “Bittersweet Symphony.” “White Lightning.”
No, those aren’t brands of moonshine – those are the different ice cream flavors that I have tried so far from The Ice Cream Shack. Much like Wegman’s grocery story, I have become enamored with this local lactose staple. I’ll keep you updated on the newest flavors… Continue reading
Because You’re Never Too Old for Story Time
I thought I would try something different today. If anyone is good at drawing, it definitely needs some more illustrations:
A real turtle that I saw the day after I originally published this post!
Once upon a time, there was a Turtle. He was born on a foggy, rainy day. When he poked his head out of the shell that had been his home for so many weeks, he felt a cool mist breeze over his little turtle body. He looked around at his brothers and sisters who were still in their eggs, and he decided to go exploring – after all, he was hungry!
What he didn’t know was that his mother had built the nest just a few feet away from a steep slope high above a stream. Continue reading
Life Reconciling 