Theology for Breakfast: Forward Day by Day Aug Sept Oct 2026 - Punish and Bless

The quarterly magazine Forward Day by Day offers an app for listening to the scriptures assigned for each day by the Episcopal Book of Common prayer, and short reflections on those readings by a different writer for each month. Every quarter I've culled highlights. See my responses going back to 2013.

In this issue, I was struck by several variations on the idea that something we take to be punishment can be a blessing.

August 2026 - Reflections by Fr. Peter M. Wallace Wallace is Vicar of St. Timothy's in Hawaii.

I'd like to remember what Wallace writes about the dialogue of Jesus and the woman at the well. The woman marvels that Jesus knows everything about her. It always sounded threatening to think that God knows every part of me. But Wallace writes that "it's an invitation to relate with the lover of your soul in a totally open, honest way. No secrets, no reservations, no holding back."

On August 14, when we honor Jonathan Myrick Daniels, Wallace told the story of this seminarian from Boston. Daniels joined in protests and voter registration efforts in Mississippi, 1962, and took a bullet aimed at young black woman Ruby Sales.

Psalm 140.1-2, "Deliver me... from the violent, who devise evil... and stir up strife all day long." My mind and Wallace's went straight to the news cycle we have every day. He writes a succinct list of worries. "Be aware, but don't be trapped by news of evil," he advises. And spend some time away from the news every day.

John 6:45, "Everyone who has...learned from the Father comes to me" reminds him of an art student whose mastery of techniques produced so-so results until a teacher helped her to relate her inner self to the scenes she depicted. Jesus can be that kind of teacher, "guiding...challenging, and loving us."

September 2026 - Reflections by Mallard BentonBenton lives in Roswell, GA, about a half hour's drive from my church. When he writes about his appreciation of clouds early in the morning, those are the same clouds I'm seeing when I walk my dog Brandy. His quotation from Job fits: "He binds up the water in his thick clouds, and the cloud is torn open by them." Benton knows the science, but he still feels the "mystery" of nature.

He and I also share the experience of singing in an Episcopal Church Choir. Like him, I watch parishioners pass before the choir mouthing or singing the hymn on their way to communion. The congregation can "let loose" thanks to music. Art takes us "out of the net" (Ps 31.4), writes Benton, and recommends the prayer for artists and musicians (BCP 819).

Another experience we share is to have our retirements interrupted. Like the writer of Psalm 90, he had grown to perceive the frailty of life and also the joy of future life in his grandchildren. Then his wife's transplant brought him into a different vocation, volunteering at medical centers. He cites Phil 2.13, "God is at work in you," enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

After I've read devotions such as Benton's in Forward each morning, I pray for people on a list I keep in memory. I make myself go through them all, practicing their names. Benton says God doesn't need a list, but I do. Benton offers a beautiful prayer I didn't know, "For Those We Love" on p. 831 of the Book of Common Prayer.

October 2026 - Reflections by Adrian Dannhauser Dannhauser was involved in ballet and corporate law before becoming rector of the Church of the Incarnation in Manhattan.

Her legal experience gives her sympathy for those Pharisees who are legally right about healing a man on the sabbath. But "Christianity is not about being right. It's about being love... embodying Christ [who] allows us to be right with God."

Paul's re-telling of his conversion story puts his intense experience into the context of Christ's story and the redemption of the world. When we share our spiritual autobiographies for the EfM program (read about Education for Ministry), we're learning to see our own stories connecting to the larger story of God's people.

She recalls a rector who challenged parishioners to take a three-foot tall Jesus doll with them everywhere for a week. Some were embarrassed, some onlookers became angry. "Have you ever been reticent to mention your faith and how it shapes your life?" she asks. Remember Psalm 108.3 "I will confess you among the peoples, O Lord."

Dannhauser focuses on worthy in the centurion's moving petition, "I am not worthy to have you come under my roof," and the prayer "I am not worthy to gather up the crumbs under thy table." She thinks of being unworthy of a job. That does not change the fact of our infinite worth to God. Her teenage daughter, giving sass and rolling her eyes, may not appear worthy of a loving response, but those actions do not change her worth in her mother's eyes.

That daughter crops up again in a meditation on Jonah. Dannhauser used to think that being swallowed by a fish was God's punishment of Jonah, but she realizes that the fish rescued Jonah, whose half-hearted obedience is good enough for God to use. In the same way, when the daughter grudgingly admits, "I love you too, Mom," Dannhauser says, "I'll take that."

I never knew a connection between the act of kneeling down and the Hebrew word translated as "blessing." This makes sense in Ps 134, "Bless the Lord." But Dannhauser cites St. Francis for the idea that God also kneels to adore US, a feeling I can identify with: just this morning, I was kneeling beside my dog Brandy to give her a tummy rub that elicited sighs of contentment.

Dannhauser is the first of these writers in my years of reading Forward to grapple with the ugliest line in the Psalms, the one about dashing their captor's little ones against a rock (Ps 137.9). She learned from a victim of sexual abuse how cathartic it was to imagine punishing her assailant. Dannhauser says it can do good to "give God your anger, your sorrow, your repentance" until "all that's left is peace."

Stepping Stones that Brought Me to this Job (as I prepare to leave it)

[My final "Pulse of the Parish" column for The Bells newsletter at St. James Episcopal Church, Marietta.]

In EfM (Education for Ministry) we learn that you can identify stepping stones in your life where God guided your journey.

As I'm about to re-retire after nearly four years as Communications Coordinator at St. James, I see stepping stones that made this job feel like a culmination. At different points in my life, I was...

• the little boy who typed a family newsletter
• the Drama Club director who could fit five pages of credits into four page programs
• the Middle School Spirit Club sponsor whose photo collages helped even introverts to see themselves fitting in the group
• the COVID-era Drama Teacher who learned to edit videos so remote actors could appear "on set"

I was also the freshman on the Vestry in 2006, gung-ho to help parishioners get involved. To that end...

• I became a compiler of devotions for many Advents and Lents, written by parishioners, for parishioners, to connect activities in our church with their faith.
• I became director of murder mystery comedies, set at St. Martin-by-the-Chicken, that bonded the parish over laughter at our own characters and foibles. (D. G. Reisinger always asked us to kill her off in Act One so she wouldn't have to memorize any more lines.)
• And I was the Clerk typing up news and plans for the Parish in the Vestry minutes every month for 12 years.

It was as Clerk of the Vestry that I volunteered to do bulletins, the newsletter, and the hall monitor video "for about three weeks." That was April of 2023! Since then, I've had a blast doing essentially what I've always done. In that time, I've served two bosses, wise, appreciative, and very good at finding typos. I've grown to know all of you better in the process.

What Stepping-Stones lie ahead? Well, you never know, but I see myself at St. James continuing as a Mentor for EfM, a Baritone for the Choir, a Cyclist who rides a few dozen miles every warm day, a devoted Dog-Walker, and a Novice Poet who drafts the kind of verses he used to teach.

I am so delighted that my replacement is less than half my age and already deeply involved in our Parish's life and work. We're in good hands with Patrick White!

Playing Outdoors after Dinner

Taking photos of some recent Wednesdays at St. James, I've been especially drawn to the time between dinner and the organized activities that follow, i.e., singing, worship, study. Mother Mariclair feels the same way about that time.

[I published this article in The Bells of St. James, the parish newsletter. While I never mention my Aunt Blanche and Uncle Jack in the article, most of these memories come from their legendary Monday night dinners. These were open houses for anyone in town who RSVP'd - old folks, young parents, adult friends, toddlers, cousins, eight kids and their friends... Read more about Aunt Blanche.]

For me, it brings memories. We kids would tumble out of doors after supper to play games in neighbors' yards in twilight, while young parents stood back watching and chatting with each other and with elders. The older kids would lead the younger ones in friendly games of tag or catch.

I remember how good it felt to be watched by people of different generations. To me, the 12-to-16-year-olds were celebrities. I was amazed when adults who were neither my parents nor my teachers showed interest in me and my dreams. I remember how they made me feel accepted and important, and, sixty years later, I'm grateful.

Wednesday this week: Children's Ministry Coordinator Natalie Fowler chats with a pre-schooler and a middle schooler. In the background, high school kids play four square with elementary school kids.

I can guess that my parents were grateful, too, for time off from me, and time to talk with other grown ups with no agenda, no pressure.

If you remember such evening times in neighborhoods -- if you even remember neighborhoods! -- then I invite readers of different generations to join us Wednesdays at St. James and make that kind of experience available again.

Dolly Parton Saves the Day!

On a dirt trail through the woods my dog Brandy and I passed a lady who struggled up the other way while my phone played "Nine to Five" at the end of a story from Nashville. I turned to shout to the lady, "Hey, it's Dolly Parton day!" She lit up and said, "I know! Nine - two - five!" We walked our ways separate but united.

The story also primed me to fall in love immediately with artist Micah Johnson, whose story came next on All Things Considered. Bipolar disorder cut short the pro baseball career he'd always dreamed of, but his love for painting has saved him. I loved the story, I loved his voice, and I loved the art that flashed up on my screen when I searched for his paintings. A nephew had asked if Black people could be astronauts, and Johnson painted the boy in a space suit - and it's touching and surprising. The artist says he wants to get beyond making something that looks pretty with the sofa, or something that looks like the model -- these days, anyone can do that (he didn't have to add, with AI).

astronaut image Micah Johnson at work

This after the uncomfortable pause on Science Friday, usually a source of amusement and awe. The host asked two AI experts how they're sleeping, since they both have small children. I think one of them started to cry. Both admitted they can think of little else but how to keep AI from going rogue.

Then there'd been another story about arts and artists -- all about Trump's history with the Kennedy Center, and the likelihood that he will look for a way to demolish what he can't have.

So I'm delighted to think of Dolly on her new day.

A few years ago, NPR had broadcast a thoughtful piece about how Dolly transcended divisions over genre, politics, and religion. (I recommend Jad Adumbrad's podcast Dolly Parton's America).

Since her death, I've watched the film 9 to 5, her first, and adored her persona. Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin have confirmed, that was the real Dolly. I loved the song she wrote on the set of the movie and bought the LP that contained it, which also introduced me to Woody Guthrie's song "Deportees," which also introduced my young self to the injustice of using migrants to harvest our crops for cheap and then kicking them out like criminals. Dolly didn't sound political when she sings the bitter news summary of a plane crash that killed the workers on their ways home: "The news said, 'They were just deportees.'"

I'll become more of an expert before the next 9/25 rolls around.

Theology for Breakfast: Forward Day by Day Spring and Summer 2026

Every morning the Forward Day by Day app reads aloud the scripture assigned by the Episcopal Book of Common prayer. Then I relax into a short reflection on those readings offered by their quarterly print magazine Forward Day by Day, a different writer for each month. Every quarter I've culled highlights. See my responses going back to 2013.

I didn't keep up notes in February or March, but two envelopes covered with notes from April make up for that lapse.

April 2026 - Reflections by Katie NakamaraNakamara is a priest in the Diocese of Alabama.

In some meditations, scripture reminds Nakamara of people on the margins of life. Christ's call from the Cross, "Why have you forsaken me?" reminds her of memorials she has led for unhoused people who died of overdoses and related problems. Her efforts to alleviate pain in that population were never enough. No happy reassurances, here, just that Christ's suffering, too, was not alleviated.

In Acts, Peter and John "look intently" into the face of a lame man at the gate called "Beautiful." They heal him. She recalls a difficult man in the psych ward who was pacified when someone engaged him one-on-one. After that, he accepted detox and came back full of gratitude. Nakamara concludes, "Simply seeing God's people as beautiful and worthy is what we're called to do. Miracles... can follow later."

Why are there two angels at Christ's tomb on the day of Resurrection? Nakamara thinks that sharing news is "inherently relational," whether it's good or bad.

Nakamara has a lighter side. She observes that movie heroes never eat on screen. Mr. Darcy? James Bond? Bruce Wayne? Sherlock Holmes? She's right: we don't want our heroes to be too human. But the resurrected Jesus in Luke 24 asks his apostles, "Have you anything to eat?" Awestruck, they watch him eat fried fish. I love that. I imagine the only sound was his contented "Mmm-hmmm."

Like Nakamara, I shudder at the drowning of Pharaoh's solders and their horses. A lot of dads, brothers, sons, and animals who have no choice but to pursue the Hebrews go on to perish in the Red Sea. According to Nakamara, the Talmud commentators were also uneasy. Talmud says that angels did NOT rejoice with the Israelites. Can we, too, hold both gratitude for triumph for "us" AND empathy for "them?"

She is intrigued by the past tense in Col 1.20: "God was pleased to reconcile himself to all things." At this time, as we feel estranged from earth, family, friends, even our own capacity to accept and give, it is a comfort that God already reconciled us. "The question," she asks, "is whether we can believe and trust this enough that we can go and be reconciled to one another, to the earth, and to ourselves?"

Nakamara finds something good in the longest, most tedious psalm. It's 119:64, "The world is full of your love; instruct me in your statutes." She writes that the beginning of discipleship is to slow down to notice this ever-presence of God in all things and people.

June 2026 - Reflections by Megan Preston MeyerMeyer is a licensed lay preacher who lives in Switzerland and edits the Via Media Review.

Meyer goes off on memorable tangents from inconspicuous points:

• "The light of Christ" reminds her how concentric lenses in a lighthouse project a single bulb across 60 miles of Lake Superior. We are the lenses. Are we keeping the lens clean?
• A time to tear and a time to sew brings the admission that she could easily buy her husband new socks, but she sews "Frankensocks" from torn ones, valuing the time alone away from screens.
• Paul's admonishments come from a place of love, she says, based on the post script to one of his tirades: "See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand!" His large, rough handwriting contrasted to the cultured scribe's. This is "almost light-hearted," she says, and endears Paul to her. And me.
• "Oh, how I love your law! All the day long it is in my mind." My least favorite Psalm, 119, includes dozens of lines like that. Meyer admits that, no, God's law is not in her mind all day long, and she doesn't even want it to be! But she can want to want to, can't she? The idea, from St. Ignatius, is her alternative to guilt.

July 2026 - Reflections by Tina FrancisShe's a writer, photographer, and seminarian with ties to South India, Dubai, Canada, and Seattle. She includes taste and smell in many of her meditations. My own olfactory senses are underdeveloped, so those references are lost on me and a little annoying. But friends who've been following her work tell me how much they appreciate her enhanced palette of senses.

The first aroma she deals with isn't pleasant: it's sweat. The church heroes honored early in July were Pauli Murray and Moses the Black, people who "wrestled" with failure and "stayed in the ring" when "bolting" seemed a wise alternative. In raising children and being married, staying is the most courageous thing you can do. In another meditation, one about the command to "be a servant," she wishes that she could be a servant in a "charming, non-sweaty way," but servanthood often "smells like bleach and hospital coffee colling in a Styrofoam cup." When you're getting grumpy, though, stay with it, because "joy sidles in -- quiet as a cat curling up in your lap."

One anecdote above all others hit home with me in her response to the apostles' question at the Last Supper, "Surely not I, Lord?" Francis said something harsh to her husband early in their marriage. He walked out of the room. Silence about the incident carried through dinner and evening chores, but the question was always "humming underneath: Was I the bad guy here?" The story doesn't end with a reconciliation, but another question: "What if there are no bad guys?" She concludes, "Love is the place where your damage shows up to testify."

Francis gets fear right, how "it can break your resolve in an instant, can root you in place or send you running." So Peter denied Jesus three times in one night. "And still," she observes, "Jesus called Peter 'the Rock.'" Grace doesn't throw you away, she says.

Like a small pebble in your sock, a small bad habit or a minor grievance can "wear a groove" into your life. Beware.

She remembers a mix of aromas and tastes from a street where Jews, Muslims, and Christians were neighbors. Their different kinds of bread and spices mingled in the air as their different holidays overlapped. "Maybe unity isn't agreement," she writes. "Maybe it's a feast table [where] bread is bread, no matter whose hands kneaded it." I like that, and I like how it ties in with Communion. The Scripture, by the way, was Paul's respect for others' differences over piety concerning foods and holy days.

Finally, She tells how joy and ache can be "braided" as with the women leaving the empty tomb, "with fear and great joy" (Mt 28.8)As a toddler, her son wouldn't cry right away after a fall, but would give her a look. "His eyes asked, Is this nothing, or is the end of the world?" Just asking that makes me smile, and I think it's probably a good question to ask at every bump in our journeys.

The Vietnam War made me a Nerd: Bicycle Tour Continues

←← | ← ||

Scott Smoot rides in Hanoi today, where the grandeur of ancient Vietnam blends with relics of French colonial rule. On Hanoi's busy streets, the only rule for cyclists and pedestrians seems to be "look out." I take the sidewalk whenever I can.

Hanoi was a world away from Chicago, where my family lived in 1968, but the Vietnam War was only a quarter-turn of the TV dial from super-powered characters I wanted to watch. To get to them, I had to pass through grainy footage of explosions and injured soldiers. I couldn't avoid radio news about the enemy in Hanoi.

That summer, the Vietnam War hit close to home, not even an hour's drive up Halstead Street, where police clubbed and gassed anti-war protesters. I lay awake nights, afraid that the Vietnamese would come to get us, or that I would be drafted to go over there. I was nine years old.

Mom told me that I wouldn't have to worry if I made good grades in school. "They don't draft students who have scholarships."

That sealed my future. Till then, I'd been pretty much a slacker. My third grade teacher Mrs. Lee observed that I was wrapped in fantasy while everyone else did their classwork. Even during recess, when the other little boys played sports, I was being the Joker or the Penguin.

But, seeking that college scholarship, I got straight A's in fourth grade. I got on student council. Mrs. Finkle exempted me from routine work so that I could teach reading and spelling to my classmate Glen from the trailer park -- an experience that made teaching my second-favorite career choice. (First choice was being a guest star on Bewitched.)

In the years that followed, I became an Honor Roll student at a prestigious school, recipient of the Angier B. Duke Scholarship, graduate with distinction in English, and teacher for 40 more years.

Hanoi is the latest stop on my virtual world-tour of places that have had an impact on my life. Since September 2025, I've biked 1200 miles on trails around Atlanta, the distance from the middle of India to Vietnam's capital.

Of related interest

• See my page Boomer Basement to find much more about Joker, Bewitched, and all the furniture of this Baby Boomer's inner world.
• My poetry blog includes a couple of poems that relate to that elementary school period. See Wingtips and Ghost Story.
• I found it hard NOT to put down a very uncomfortable but wonderful novel by an author whose family brought him here from Vietnam during the ignominious US withdrawal. See my reflection on The Sympathizer.

Miles YTD 760 || 2nd World Tour Total 21,851 miles since June 2020 || Next Stop: Japan

←← | ← || Use the arrows to follow the entire tour from the start.

Theology for Breakfast: Forward Day by Day April 2026

Every morning I let my Forward Day by Day app read aloud the scripture assigned by the Episcopal Book of Common prayer, then relax into a short reflection on those readings offered by their quarterly print magazine Forward Day by Day, a different writer for each month. Every quarter I've culled highlights. See my responses going back to 2013.

I didn't keep up notes in February or March, but in April I made up for that lapse with two envelopes covered with notes, front and back.

April 2026 - Reflections by Katie NakamaraNakamara is a priest in the Diocese of Alabama.

In some meditations, scripture reminds Nakamara of her involvement with people on the margins of life. Christ's call from the Cross, "Why have you forsaken me?" reminds her of many services she has led for unhoused people, especially memorials for those who died of overdoses and related problems. Her efforts to alleviate pain in that population were never enough. No happy reassurances, here, just that Christ's suffering, too, was not alleviated.

In Acts, Peter and John "look intently" into the face of a lame man at the gate called "Beautiful." They heal him. She recalls a difficult man in the psych ward who was pacified when someone engaged him one-on-one. He got to detox and came back full of gratitude. Nakamara concludes, "Simply seeing God's people as beautiful and worthy is what we're called to do. Miracles... can follow later."

Why are there two angels at Christ's tomb on the day of Resurrection? Nakamara thinks that sharing news is "inherently relational," whether it's good or bad.

Nakamara has a lighter side. She observes that movie heroes never eat on screen. She's right: Mr. Darcy? James Bond? Bruce Wayne? Sherlock Holmes? We don't want our heroes to be too human. But the resurrected Jesus in Luke 24 asks his apostles, "Have you anything to eat?" Awestruck, they watch him chew pan-seared fish. I love that. I imagine the only sound was his contented "Mmm-hmmm."

Like Nakamara, I'm always pained by the drowning of the Egyptians and their horses. A lot of dads, brothers, sons, and animals who have no choice but to pursue the Hebrews go on to perish in the Red Sea. According to Nakamara, the Talmud says that angels did NOT rejoice with the Israelites. Can we, too, hold both gratitude for triumph for "us" AND empathy for "them?"

She is intrigued by the past tense in Col 1.20: "God was pleased to reconcile himself to all things." At this time, as we feel estranged from earth, family, friends, even our own capacity to accept and give, it is a comfort that God already reconciled us. "The question," she asks, "is whether we can believe and trust this enough that we can go and be reconciled to one another, to the earth, and to ourselves?"

Nakamara finds something good in Psalm 119, the most tedious of the Psalms. It's verse 64, "The world is full of your love; instruct me in your statutes." The beginning of discipleship is to slow down to notice this ever-presence of God in all things and people."