Finding Your Soul by David Anderson
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The Left-Handed Blessing of Christmas Eve
On Christmas Eve, as I placed a piece of bread in a man’s hands, he gripped my arm and said, “29 years of sobriety. Thank you.” Normally, the communion ritual is mute, except for the words of administration. “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.” Sometimes the recipient says only, “Amen.” So be…
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We Need a Little Christmas
You know that holiday music staple, taken from Jerry Herman’s Broadway musical Mame. In the show, the song comes just after Mame has lost her fortune in the great Wall Street crash of 1929. Mame decides that she, her little nephew Patrick and the two household servants need some cheering up. For we need a…
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Hope is not Optimism
This is Advent, the season of hope. Yet our hopes were dashed on Friday. Many people haven’t felt like this since 9/11. The tragedy that struck that elementary school in Newtown makes us wonder. Is there any hope? Any hope for the kingdom? For a world where the lion and the lamb lie down together? Hope, the great…
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Christmas After Newtown
I lit a fire in the hearth this morning and turned on the lights of the bare Christmas tree. It was six a.m., cold outside with a grey morning light. Nine days before Christmas Eve. Twenty little children have been killed in their classrooms, festooned with holiday decorations and happily cluttered with Christmas crafts. I…
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The Man Who Spoils Advent
It happens every year. We get off to such a beautiful start in Advent, and then he shows up. This season of hope and expectation opens with the lighting of the first purple candle and a glorious reading from Isaiah. Then comes the second Sunday of Advent, and he makes his annual appearance, the man…
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The Arrival
In “the Arrival,” a 1996 Sci-Fi, Charlie Sheen stars as a radio astronomer who scans the heavens for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence. His radio telescope is trained on the stars, hoping to pick up a narrow band of radiation that would belie the communication of an advanced civilization beyond our solar system. A poster on…
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The Advent Moment
The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton. In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is far off in the deeps of…
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Losing My Mind
I am at Pendle Hill, a Quaker retreat center outside Philadelphia. Like all retreat centers it is a refuge of quiet, a place of reflection, a deliberate exit from the fast lane of contemporary life. The buildings are Pennsylvania fieldstone, circa 1930, small, spare, rather cold (Quakers waste nothing, especially fuel oil), but with roaring…
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Charge to a Newly Ordained
On Sunday my son-in-law, Anthony Damelio, was ordained at Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. I was honored when Anthony invited me to give the “Charge to the Newly Ordained.” As your father-in-law, Anthony, my charge to you on the occasion of your ordination is born of blood, the vows of marriage, and the blessed obligation…