Theology for Breakfast: Forward from November 2021 to April 2022

Every morning I read the day's meditation on scripture in Forward Day by Day, and I've culled highlights every quarter going back to 2013.

I'm way behind. (Blame it on my new poetry blog First Verse, as a poem a week takes more time than I anticipated.) After a quick selection from November and December 2021, I'm digesting the issue for February-April 2022, which was especially rich.

November and December 2021

November's meditations were contributed by Robert Two Bulls, who describes himself as "Oglala Lakota, Episcopal priest, artist, husband, and father." Reading in Hebrews 10.24 the admonition to "provoke one another to love and good deeds," Two Bulls tells how, in his early days in the priesthood, he was assigned a mission he didn't want, to provide housing for needy families in DC's inner city. By the end of that year, he knew he had "been provoked by others 'to love and good deeds.'" He asks us to think if we've ever been provoked that way. Did we answer the call? "It's not too late," he adds.

My favorite meditation from Two Bulls begins, "I have never run a marathon and I'm certain I never will." He's responding to 2 Peter 1.5-6 -- "support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness." One's own spirituality, he writes, is a combination of beliefs, practices, and feelings that are exercised with some mix of "prayer, meditation, contemplation, and fasting." Telling us we need "persistence and stamina," he asks, "Which spiritual exercise needs a little more practice?"

In December, meditations came from a young freelance writer Cara Meredith. She struggles to relate our culture's jolly Christmas season to the harsh and even scary warnings from Old Testament prophets that our prayer book assigns for Advent. When Amos says prepare to meet your God, she advises us that he's not imagining a baby in a manger (Amos 4.12). God's threat to pursue the wayward Israelites wherever they try to hide seems scary too, until Meredith relates it to The Runaway Bunny, a children's book in which the mother tells her son, "If you run away... I will run after you. For you are my little bunny." Even in Amos, Meredith "can't help but see love squeezed into the center of the text."

February
Catherine Healy, rector of St. Paul and the Redeemer in Chicago, applied her experiences hiking and biking to Luke's account of the Transfiguration: going up on a mountain isn't easy. When we long for a transcendant experience, we should remember that "mountaintop" moments are often preceded by years of work. She asks us what steps we're taking to prepare ourselves to go "up the mountain." One of my answers would be, I'm writing this. Another would be, I bike 1-3 hours a day with media off -- just me, the world, my cascading thoughts, and God --listening, questioning, redirecting.

The whole time I was reading Healy's work, I was preoccupied by an upcoming visit with a valued friend, our first since we discovered deep differences in our ways of seeing current events. Healy addresses that situation in her meditations. After we read the story where Jesus dispels the crowd that was ready to stone a woman, Healy identifies with the crowd. She ticks off ways that she herself gets ticked off at others and admits she's frightened that others will "turn that laser beam of judgment" on her. Yes, that's how I feel. Jesus disarms the situation with compassion, in the sense of showing that he knows what all the concerned parties are feeling.

Partisans were tearing things apart in the time that Paul wrote Romans 14.1-23, and Paul isn't so concerned about what they do or say so long as their "choices give honor and thanks to God."

Identifying with Jacob as he prepares for a rough reunion with Esau, I was interested in Healy's quotation from George Fox, the original Quaker. When we meet someone with a different belief system "who tries to do what is right and true," Fox says we should listen to hear, not in order to answer what they say, but to "answer that of God in everyone." [Shortly after writing this page, I wrote a poem about the Jacob-Esau reunion, Angels Never Know.] A related reflection on Proverbs 3.17-18 tells us that the wise person "may not win every fight, but they will know what is worth fighting for."

I did post a separate article after I read Healy's reflection on the Good Shepherd. See A Sheepish Admission.

March
Mary Lockey wrote meditations for March. She lives with her family in North Carolina, where she's on staff at a community college. She attends Grace Church.

Lockey puts Scripture in dialogue with our culture. There's politics. The governor Pilate is puzzled when Jesus tells him, "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18.36). His followers will not be fighting Pilate, Jesus says, meaning, "That's not how we do things here [in the Kingdom of God]." She asks her reader, "Do you meet the world differently because you follow Jesus?"

Then, there's sports. Paul's "pressing on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of Jesus" reminds Lockey of a certain little league baseball game when the catcher, her neighbor's son, paused the game to confer with the pitcher. Her neighbor explained that his son was probably calling for a fast ball, because the next batter was an "easy out." Then the batter hit a double. After the game, the young catcher explained to her, "Sam got hit by a pitch earlier. I could tell it hurt. I didn't want him to be afraid, So, I told the pitcher to let him get a hit." So, no, winning is not the only thing.

Many striking meditations tell us that to own our fears, sadness, doubt, and even anger with God, are not signs of weakness, lack of faith, or illness.

Lockey hears something I've missed in the lovely line, "Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning" (Ps. 30.6). A neighbor used that phrase to console Lockey's mom after the death of Lockey's sister and brother. But Lockey's mother wept night after night for a long time. Lockey observes that the psalm doesn't say we should hurry through the night to get to the morning. "There is no morning without night." I'm reminded of the cathartic moment in the animated treasure Inside Out when the character Joy accepts Sadness.

Lockey's meditations happened to coincide with the first weeks of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. About putting your trust in God when you're afraid (Psalm 56.3), Lockey writes, "God does not want us to pretend that we are fine when we are not." Like her mother, who could not allay her daughter's fear of thunder but stayed with her during a storm, "God wants to be with us ... even when we are deeply afraid." She didn't know when she wrote that how a Ukrainian comedian who had played President on TV would grow before our eyes into the role of real-life President. Sleepless under intense bombing and clear-eyed about Putin's wanting him dead, Zelenskyy stayed put in Kiev.

Lockey notes that Jesus was led by the Spirit not "to" the wilderness -- to be left there alone -- but "in" the wilderness (Luke 4.1). So even when Jesus felt hungry and dry, we are assured that the Spirit was there.

Complaining, the psalmist in Psalm 44 asks God What have you done for Israel lately? Lockey asks her readers, "Have you ever wanted God to wake up?" Yes. "How often do you think God wants you to wake up?" Good question.

When the apostles in the water-swamped boat wake Jesus, he seems peevish (Mark 4.40). "Perhaps Jesus's frustration isn't because they woke him up but that they didn't wake him sooner. How often do we depend on ourselves to weather life's storms, turning to God only when we are in over our heads?"

How can Jesus be fully human, fully divine? Lockey finds an answer in Mark 7.29. Jesus has gone aside to rest when the Gentile woman importunes him to heal her daughter. Lockey writes, "He is tired. He needs rest. A woman intrudes and annoys him persistently. He takes a stance, listens, then changes his mind and heals the Syrophoenician woman's daughter. Fully human. Fully divine."

April
Lay minister Patrick Kangrga, who wrote for April, serves as director of youth ministries at St. James Episcopal Church in Jackson, MS, where I worshipped for 17 years. I believe his meditations resonated with me for reasons beyond that connection.

A passage about God's hearing the suffering of the Hebrew slaves (Exodus 2.21) has special relevance for Kangrga, who is half Japanese and half African American. He writes that he has become more aware of how a system can benefit some races and disenfranchise others. Like seeing how a magic trick is done, he writes, "the mystery has been dispelled, and the trick has lost its power over me."

On April 9, a day for commemorating Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Kangrga connects that martyr's words to Exodus 10.23, about God's plague of darkness: "[The Egyptians] could not see one another... but all the Israelites had light where they lived." Persecuted by the Nazis, Bonhoeffer wrote to fellow-believers, "We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer." Kangrga imagines the suffering of the Egyptians, most of whom were not themselves oppressing God's people, and wants "to shed more light on ... those who suffer in the darker parts of our stories and history."

Kangrga draws on the Japanese art of Kintsugi, mending pottery in a way that draws attention to its cracks, "a broken pot made more beautiful by its brokenness." He's riffing off Psalm 31.12, "I am as useless as a broken pot," but he's also thinking ahead in Holy Week to what emerges from the brokenness of Jesus, the disciples, and the world. [Kintsugi figures prominently in a book Art + Faith. Read more in my blogpost (01/2022)]

Reading about the Last Supper in John 12.2-5, Kangrga reflects on time. At the moment when Judas tells the woman off for the money spent to anoint Jesus that could have gone to the poor, we are also aware of the future, when Judas will betray Jesus. Similarly, in Holy Week and in all our lives, Kangrga writes, "I am ever experiencing the life, death, and resurrection of Christ while attempting to live out my Christ-likeness."

For Good Friday, Kangrga combs the day's Gospel for examples of power. The Pharisees and the soldiers use power to arrest Jesus; Peter uses the power of the sword against a servant; Jesus uses power to heal the servant; Pilate uses the power given him by the emperor, but bows to the power of the mob. "Jesus died at the hand of those who mismanaged and abused power, but he lived in a way that shows how power can be loving, grace-filled and life-giving." Kangrga asks us, "How can you use your power and privilege in life-giving ways?"

Kangrga draws on his experience as youth minister in his reflection on Luke 24.41, where the resurrected Jesus asks the disbelieving disciples, "Have you anything here to eat?" Food and fun can bring joy, and that's essential to dealing with doubts and problems. Good advice to remember when your committee faces a thorny issue, that food and some kind of game or puzzle can open up the group to being creative.

Finally, Kangrga takes on the hatred expressed in Psalm 5. It's misinterpretation to see psalms like this as condoning hatred, he writes. "These are prayers in which people are actively working out their understanding of God and their own salvation." I'm aware that some of the psalms are curses, actively calling on God to cause harm to enemies, and lust for revenge animates a lot of the imagery in Revelation, but Kangrga is right. To state it in the form of a meme that I saw recently, Hatred is Biblical, but it is not Christlike.

Musician Scott Albert Johnson Talks Art and Life

Writing is "like solving a puzzle that you made for yourself." Yes! So simple, precisely what I've experienced writing for my poetry blog and solving crosswords. I've scanned Google for another source of that quote without any hits. It seems to be original to the man who said it, singer-songwriter-harmonica virtuoso Scott Albert Johnson. I may have to get his idea tattooed on my chest.

Johnson recently talked art and life with Pulitzer-nominated journalist-cartoonist Marshall Ramsey for the podcast Mississippi Stories on Youtube.

Ramsey gives his listeners an overview on Johnson's music career before he digs into Johnson's life story, some of which I observed in person. He was my student in 8th grade at a small school where I saw him often during his high school years. He went off to Harvard, New York, and Washington. Years later, when he returned to Mississippi to pursue music, his first love, his gigs brought him near Atlanta, where I had settled, and I got to see him. See more detail in my blogposts about his albums Umbrella Man (10/2007) and Going Somewhere (11/2016).

Johnson cited another musician who expressed his own feeling about playing music for pay. He said that he's getting paid for hauling his equipment to the venue, setting up, and clearing it away after the show, but, "I play music for free."

Ramsey dug deeper into an anomaly in Johnson's c.v., his degree from the Columbia School of Journalism. A professor in an undergraduate English seminar had encouraged Johnson to consider writing for a career. Johnson had always been interested in current events, so Columbia seemed a good next step. Johnson doesn't regret that journalism turned out to be a detour; in that program, he honed his writing skills and developed a way of "interacting with the world." There should be a word, Johnson mused, for mistakes that turn out to be good for your life.

Discussing the pandemic's effect on Johnson's career, Ramsey says they've both lost friends in the pandemic, some to the disease, some, to disagreements about the disease. The two men trade ideas about the internet, which had for both of them once seemed to promise a smaller world, better informed, more connected. Now Ramsey says there's so much money to be made by "tickling the amygdalas" of users by arousing fear. Johnson responds that all we can do is to honor the dignity of others and do our own best work day by day. Maybe art can bridge gaps, he hopes.

Time to get my tattoo.

What's New in that New Commandment from Jesus

Easter celebration this year. Photo: Paul Kelley

"I give you a new commandment," Jesus says to his disciples in John 13.31-35, "that you love one another as I have loved you." Fr. Roger Allen, Rector of St. James Episcopal Church, Marietta, posed an interesting question. What's "new" about that commandment, since it's bedrock Hebrew scripture?

Fr. Roger took the unusual step of reading the verses of Leviticus 19 that lead up to the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. In this context, we appreciated how Leviticus recasts the ten commandments as different aspects of loving our neighbors, including the way we're commanded to share our bounty with the poor, to protect the vulnerable, to be honest and fair in our dealings with others, and why? "Because I am the Lord your God."

The newness of the commandment when Jesus says it, is in the context of incarnation: God placing himself on the line, and we, doing the same, as God's body on earth, empowered by the Holy Spirit. Fr. Roger drew on the wonderful reading that we heard from Acts in which Peter hears the angel say, "What God has made clean, you must not call profane." Motivated by the vision, Peter drew Gentile men into the movement. Peter's adversaries fall silent, then praise God for sharing the same holy spirit with the Gentiles as with them. Fr. Roger pointed out that it was not argument or rhetoric but a story of relationship that affected Peter's adversaries.

With a quick survey of the gospels, Fr. Roger broadened the idea of love beyond that nice feeling we usually associate with the word to include a dozen other Gospel passages about healing, providing, forgiving -- including (I recall) feeding 5000, the Good Samaritan, the father who forgave his Prodigal Son.

"Love," he quoted Ursula Leguin, “doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.” Fr. Roger drew the connection to our rite of communion through bread and wine.

Fr. Roger asked us how we think the Church is doing with this "new" commandment. He repeated a witticism, that Jesus preached the kingdom of heaven, but all he got was the church. Fr. Roger asked us to compare our church today to what was described in ancient history. The early church truly was distinctive, known for the care taken of its members by its members, and the courage and endurance they showed under persecution -- without rancor.

Fr. Roger took another unusual step into current events. The shooting in Buffalo had captured everyone's attention that morning. Fr. Roger put that in the context of the clash of worldviews we have today, that anger and hatred we see in the shooter's adoption of the "replacement" conspiracy.

Fr. Roger held out the hope that we can make a difference by doing what Jesus commands. He also led us in prayer for our enemies: not just for justice to befall them, but for them to be led to rightness.

Bike from Away

←← | ← || →

Scott Smoot at Arches Provincial Park, virtually

This month I've biked 448 miles around Atlanta. On the map of my virtual tour of the world, 448 miles takes me from the Gaspé Peninsula to Gander, Newfoundland. For my photo, I bent the path to include Newfoundland's Arches Provincial Park.

Gander is a small town that came to the world's attention on 9/11/2001. When the US closed its air space, 33 planes suddenly had nowhere to land but the regional airport on the northern shore of Newfoundland.  With no advance warning, Gander and other small towns suddenly had thousands of guests for an uncertain amount of time.

The musical Come From Away tells that story. The same actors portray both anxious passengers and townspeople determined to make their guests welcome. For many, it was a life-altering experience -- in a good way. Come Away Feeling Good (07/2019) is my take on the show.

After living the story through that show, I can add Gander to my virtual tour of "places I've lived or loved." 

448 miles from Quebec to Gander, Newfoundland
April 24 - May 16, 2022

I'm 9856 miles into my second virtual bike trip around the world.
Riding on trails around Atlanta, I've cycled 1189 miles in 2022, average speed 15.3

←← | ← || → Use the arrows to trace the entire bike tour from the start.

"Everything Everywhere All at Once" Lives Up to its Title

The film Everything Everywhere All At Once lives up to its title, but all its multiverses and martial arts melées center on a single moment.

[PHOTO Collage: Poster art by James Jean; Stephanie Hsu, Michelle Yeoh, and Ke Huy Quan; Jamie Lee Curtis]

In that moment, we're at the laundry run by Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh} and her hapless husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). The grown up daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) has fled in anger and frustration from a confrontation with her mother over Joy's coming out. Evelyn yells for her to wait, she has something important to say. When they're face to face, Hsu shows Joy's need for her mother to say something that might bring some kind of healing, and we see in Yeoh's face that Evelyn searches for the right words. Then she chooses to say something else.

A new universe forms for every road not taken, physicists tell us. The premise of the movie is that Evelyn, who regrets so many choices in her life, is the churning center of hundreds of multiverses, all of which are in danger from a mysterious mastermind who has created an instrument of universal destruction. For both the multiverse and for her family, only Evelyn can save the day.

She has to "jump" from universe to universe, a process initiated by making unlikely choices, like putting shoes on the wrong feet, or eating lip balm. The laughs and the ecchh factor increase as each jump requires a more bizarre choice.

The writer-directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert told NPR that the universe story is a metaphor for the family story. So even when we're laughing, the gravity of that one moment is still pulling on our emotions.  Yeoh says that she cried when she read the script, because in her forty year career, she hasn't had this kind of opportunity to show off the range of what she can do.  Costar Ke Huy Quan said much the same thing, his opportunities having dried up soon after his debut as the precocious kid in the second Lost Ark movie.

Quan plays Waymond Wang, Evelyn's guide to the multiverse. At the start, he's kind-hearted, goofy, and regretful that he disappoints her -- just as her father had warned he would do when the couple eloped. At unexpected moments, he's taken over by Waymond of the Alpha-universe, a commando who fights off attackers with just a fanny pack. In the universe where young Evelyn listened to her parents, he's a suave but lonely billionaire. But in every incarnation, his spirit is expressed by the goofy Waymond who pleads with Evelyn, "Please be kind."

I didn't recognize glamorous Jamie Lee Curtis in the role of Deirdre, the IRS auditor who'll seize the Wangs' business unless she gets straight answers from Evelyn about back taxes. Pursuing Evelyn from world to world, Deirdre goes from harried bureaucrat to something like the Terminator to a kittenish lover who plays Debussy with her toes. Curtis looks like she's having a blast.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is overwhelming at first. We learn how to watch the movie as we go. Its Wizard of Oz structure helps: It starts at home with the family in an uproar, goes to whirlwind of outlandish places, and comes back.

The fun that everyone had making the film shows to the audience, and is shared.

Remembering Chrys Street (1930-2022)

Chrys Street (1930-2022)

Chrys Street shared her love of the arts with me through gifts of books, clipped articles, and loyal support of music and theatre programs at St. James Episcopal Church in Marietta. I will remember her as she appeared at church in the front pew, wearing jewelry (her design, I'd bet) and always some sweeping fabric -- a colorful wrap, an elegant scarf. She would close her eyes as she savored the best parts of the choir's anthems.

She taught at the Walker School long before I did, and founded institutions that thrive today, including Cobb County Landmarks historical society, the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art in Auburn, Alabama, and the Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, GA.

[PHOTO: The home of William Root, founder of St. James Church, was salvaged, moved to its current location, and restored by the Cobb County Landmarks Society of which Chrys Street was a founding member. See how the society's Talking Walls program affected me as a teacher (11/2014).]

In their online tribute, her family wrote:

Chrys was a true artist in the deepest sense of the word. She designed and made stained glass windows, some of which are installed at the Cobb Youth Museum and Marietta Middle School. She found joy in taking discarded and damaged materials to incorporate them into her arts, a mural from broken dishes, a rooster from a discarded laundry detergent jug, or garlands for a large outdoor Christmas tree made from pie tins. She was always saving broken and discarded things with an eye for giving it new life as a part of some wonderous display.

Stained glass panels by Chrys Street

Because I wanted Chrys to know how I appreciated the books she gave me about songwriters Sammy Cahn and Cole Porter, I put a lot of care into blogposts about them -- and then sent her printed copies, since she "didn't do" online. They are among the best articles I've written:

• So He's Responsible (12/2013) about Sammy Cahn, lyricist behind "Call Me Irresponsible" and dozens of other songs so natural that it feels like no one had to write them.
• Believing in Cole Porter (02/2014)

She was so proud of her husband John and his career with the Portman architecture firm that re-fashioned Atlanta. Their home on Church Street was his design, built in 1955. It's one story, with floor-to-ceiling windows, walkways through gardens, and books, lots of books. The Eisenhower-era billboard in the driveway that proclaims "SOCIALISM doesn't work!: LOOK at EUROPE" is practically a Cobb County landmark itself.

When John's dementia made him uneasy about going out in public, she stayed home from church to care for him. I saw her just once during that period, at the UPS store, when she confessed how disheartening it was.

After the years at home, she came back to church diminished in body, though not in spirit. Even her walking stick was a work of art!

Peace, Chrys.

iMagination in Opera: The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs

Atlanta Opera's production of The (R)evolution of Steve Job" told a familiar story in a compelling way with imaginative use of techniques developed in live theatre during the 40-some years of Jobs's career.

The story of Steve Jobs is familiar not just because we all carry his greatest successes in our pockets. The librettist Mark Campbell has highlighted the personal story of a man's single-minded pursuit of his vision of success, subordinating everything else -- love, family, friendship, self-care, ideals. It's the story Faust, Ebenezer Scrooge, and the protagonist of Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along.

But with composer Mason Bates, Campbell has reshaped the story to be circular, like the Japanese enso design that was so important to Jobs. The enso represents the simplicity and the freedom of open-endedness that were ideals for Jobs.

In the opera's prologue, very young Steve receives the gift of a home-made workbench from his adoring father Paul (Daniel Armstrong) -- and through 17 scenes adult Steve comes back to the bench in an epilogue. By then, "get back to bench" has come to mean getting back to the creativity, curiosity, and connection (love of and from his father) that got him started.

The music that invites us into that sweet prologue catapults us without pause to the pinnacle of the man's success in design and commerce, as Jobs (played by baritone John Moore) introduces "One Device" that will do everything and allow us room to be creative.  In a fugue for the chorus, the composer suggests how the demand for the device multiplies exponentially. Suddenly, at the end of that number, the music sounds the alarm that something's wrong, and a character tells Jobs, "You're dying." For the rest of the opera, the music and libretto take us back and forth through the lifetime of Steve Jobs. 

The non-linear techniques developed in theatre since 1970 allow the creators freedom to make, not a straight narrative arc, but a kind of argument within Jobs  himself expressed as dialogue with people whom he loved and/or hurt. These are Chrisann Brennan (Elizabeth Sutphen), a lover shunted aside when she bore their daughter; buddy Steve Wozniak (Billie Bruley), technical "Wizard of Woz" who built the products that made Jobs rich and famous; Kobun Chino Otogawa (Adam Lau), a Zen master who returns often in the opera to encourage Jobs along his circular spiritual journey; and Laurene Powell Jobs (Sarah Larsen), the woman who marries Jobs, stands up to him, and finally humanizes him.

Mason Bates favors transparent textures in the orchestra. The character Steve Jobs sometimes sees visions of the orchestra and sings about the sounds of its instruments, giving Bates several opportunities to highlight solos. The importance of solo guitar (Onur Alakavuklar) is emphasized by guitarist's credit listing in the space between the cast and the musical directors. Bates cranks up the orchestra and chorus for scenes such as that Broadway-style opener "One Device" and a wordless enactment of Jobs in physical pain and spiritual crisis. But some of the best moments in the opera were very quiet, often with two singers in harmony a cappella or over a sparse accompaniment.

Director Tomer Zvulun, who is also the Atlanta Opera's general and artistic director, designed this show for performances in five different theatres. Screens, so essential to the subject, are an important part of the design. Animations, slides, and full-sized murals shift and change color with shifts in the action. For example, we're startled by the image of an MRI scan that suddenly envelopes the whole stage. Moving on a set of platforms and wagons, the performers set spaces with the simplicity that Jobs would have liked -- swivel chairs for the office, a floor lamp to establish a living room, a workbench to establish the garage where the two Steves created their first products. 

In the title role, John Moore has a commanding presence, whether he's laughing with friends or cutting them down. His voice is strong, but he blends in joyous harmony with Bruley and Sutphen while their characters are still friends. Lau's low bass makes a strong impression, especially when his character tells Jobs to take just one step, that word drawn out to great length each time, to show how a step can be a journey, too. For Laurene's roles as both a muse to Jobs and his down-to-earth domestic partner, Larsen was convincing and appealing.

Poems from April

At First Verse I've managed to keep up with my goal to post a poem every week.

Some of my poems in April reflect the concerns of the month when we Episcopalians experienced the solemn beauty of Holy Week and the release of Easter.

• Etymology of Abundance: implications of Jesus's promise of abundant life
• Coming Soon: imagining Agatha Christie's take on Holy Week
• We Sing a Song of the Choir of Paul: our church choir's COVID experience in a parody of a children hymn
• Do You Believe God Had Your Back?: A crash could've killed me and didn't. Thank God. But for what?
• Behind Prejudice: A confession.

[Susan Rouse's discipline of painting a picture each week inspired me to start the blog, so I include one with each poem. This image is from the latest posting.]