A Kitchen Table Advent
Short Reflections to Share with Family & Friends.
Want to receive an email notification each time David posts?
Click here and the new reflection will be delivered right to your inbox.
-
The Squirrels of 9/12
On my early morning run today there were squirrels everywhere, racing around with walnuts clutched in their mouths. Fall is coming and they know it. It’s time to put away food for a winter’s day. There is work to do. After weeks of drum beat and ballyhoo, 9/11 came and went. Now it is 9/12.…
-
Electric Chairs
Pam and I are hosting a party tonight—for about 80 people. Since our house will not hold 80 people (even standing up), Pam suggested we let people “spill out onto the deck.” A fine idea except that the deck chairs are appallingly hideous. We got them (garage sale) over twenty years ago and the chair…
-
As the Spit Turns
This Labor Day weekend we roasted a pig and threw a party. We got the wild idea while swimming in my brother’s pool one July evening. My brother John had just grilled our two families a poolside dinner. We were still savoring the meat in our post-prandial dip and someone said, “We ought to have a pig roast!” Everybody’s…
-
The Old Well
“God is an underground river,” Meister Eckhart said, “that no one can dam up or stop.” I love that image of God because it completely flips the dominant image of God “up there.” When we first imagine a deity, God is always “up,” always distant, the Sky God of nearly every ancient religion. Until, gradually,…
-
Cracks of Gold
The great question of human spiritual development is, What do I do with my brokenness? The simple fact is, nobody makes it into this world without getting a little damaged in transit. We don’t look like the pictures in the magazines. We can’t play football or basketball like the stars—our bodies just can’t do those…
-
True Freedom
I don’t know if it’s true, but someone once told me that domesticated birds can be trained to sit by an open window—and not fly away. You put their perch next to an open window, but you tie one foot to the perch, so that when the bird attempts to fly out the window, it…
-
Wildness is Necessity
If summer is come (as of Tuesday), can vacation be far behind? Unless we’re in for a stay-cation, that means getting out of town, finding our way somewhere else. When we live in town and work in the city, we often head for someplace far from “civilization,” remote, wild. I always develop palpitations when I…
-
Holding Our Children, and Letting Them Go
This is the weekend to remember our fathers. Fathers struggle. We know this. Mothers hold onto their children, sometimes too closely, sometimes for too long, but once that wet, naked child is placed in their arms they know instinctively what to do. Fathers don’t. We have to learn this stuff. We’re not so…
-
Smile
I read this week that a typical small child smiles six hundred times a day, and old men smile two and a half times a day. That tells you all you need to know about the course of human life. As we get older, we get more “serious.” I put that in quotes, because mostly…