With thanks to Doc and Robert and all the people I do not know who choose hope and life and love by helping young people think through their choices.
This poster is from the first Teen Forum. The audience has since expanded to include all young people age 13-18.
Photo: 19 October 2022; The Bronx, New York
Filed under Advent, Antiracism, Family, Friends, Human Rights, New York, Photo
With thanks to my friend Jimmie Hawkins for the profound reminder that obedience to higher principles, values, and visions often requires disobedience to unjust and immoral laws, rules and regulations. Order Unbroken and Unbowed.
Photo: 25 June, 2022; Louisville, Kentucky
Filed under Advent, Antiracism, Current Events, Friends, Human Rights, Photo, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Walking. Germantown.
Go Tell It on the Mountain – Dolly Parton
Carol of the Bells – Black Violin
Christmas in the Trenches – John McCutcheon
Deck the Halls – Moya Brennan
All through the Night – Joanne Shenandoah
The Rebel Jesus – The Chieftains
Wonderful Counselor – Little Windows
In the Bleak Midwinter – James Taylor
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen – Rosemary Beland
Early on One Christmas Morning – Bruce Cockburn
Silent Night – Ray Lynch
The Hounds of Winter – Sting
Hallelujah – Quincy Jones, Mervyn Waren, Michael O. Jackson, Various Artists
Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence – Bill Carter And The Presbybop Quartet
Filed under Advent, Exercise, Louisville, Music, playlist
It took 45 years, but thanks to friends Leslie and DinaDeen, I finally saw Sweet Honey in the Rock in concert at Symphony Space in New York.
Recordings I had and had heard often – albums, cassettes, CDs, downloads – and those are great. Still nothing matches their performance especially when heard and viewed with good friends.
Photo: 16 March 2019, New York, New York, by DinaDeen
Walking. Germantown.
I Pray on Christmas – Blind Boys of Alabama
Coventry Carol – Philadelphia Brass Ensemble
Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence – Little Windows
Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming – Sting
Doluce Nuit – Kali
Angels We Have Heard on High – Aretha Franklin
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing – Charles T. Cozens
A King Is Born – Jarrod Spector
The Holly and the Ivy – Cumberland Gap Reunion
God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen – David Briggs, Organ/Stephen Cleobury/Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
Away in a Manger – The Rhos Orpheus Male Choir
Joy to the World – Dolly Parton
A Christmas Tree – Joanne Shenandoah
Peace Child – Indigo GIrls
Mary’s Boy Child – Tom Jackson
Sacred Gift – Bill Miller
Filed under Advent, Exercise, Louisville, Music, playlist
Designed, created, and posted by the daughter of a friend.
Let it be.
Photo: Summer, 2021; Germantown, Louisville, Kentucky
Filed under Advent, Current Events, Friends, Louisville, Photo
Walking. Germantown.
International Migrants Day.
Unite 75 – Daara J Family
Immigrant – John McCutcheon
Ave Que Emigra – Gabby Moreno
The Migrant Worker – Jim Croce
Gourma – Etran Fintawa
Take Me to Cleveland – Robert Neustadt
No Geography – The Chemical Brothers
Look in Their Eyes – David Crosby
Why We Build the Wall – Hadestown
La Jaula de Oro – Los Tigres del Norte
Alien – Gil-Scott Heron
Cages – Redbait
Bad Hombres y Mujeres – Antonio Sanchez
La Frontera – Lagartijeando, feat. Minuk
Migration – Jonny Lipford
The Dreamer – Jackson Browne
My Only Home – Unchained XL, feat. Genesis Elijah & Femi Ashiru
A Safe Place to Land – Sara Bareilles, feat. John Legend
Running – Keyon Harrold, Andrea Pizziconi & Jasson Harrold, feat. Running feat. Common & Gregory Porter
Amor Migrante – Elena & Los Fulanos
Go Tell a Bird – Maya De Vitry
Beyond the Border – Bhi Bhiman
Godspeed – Radney Foster
Where We Are – Diana Jones
Migra – Santana
Immigrant Eyes – Willie Nelson
The Immigrants – Gabby Moreno & Van Dyke Parks
Deportees – Sweet Honey in the Rock
Immigrants (We Get the Job Done) – K’naan, Snow Tha Product, Riz MC & Residente
Refugee King – Liz Vice, feat. Hannah Glover
No Human Is Illegal – The Wakes
Filed under Advent, Antiracism, Current Events, Exercise, Human Rights, Louisville, Music, playlist, United Nations
This has been the most difficult word for me this year. In many ways, purity is illusive, perhaps even unattainable. In other ways, the concept has been misused. Finally, I landed on an aspirational approach. Although I still remain unsure of my thinking and my thinking about the photo.
Is that water pure? One would hope.
Is it being purified? One would hope.
Can one be sure? I doubt it.
BUT – pure, clean, safe water for all is an aspiration of justice and a cause for which to work.
Photo: 25 April 2021, Waterfront Botanical Garden, Louisville, Kentucky
Filed under Advent, Friends, Louisville, Photo
As the holy day approaches, a number of people are asking, “What is your favorite Christmas song?” A variation is “What non-religious holiday song that moves your spirit?
Recognizing the amazing amount of wonderful holiday music, whether intentionally religious or intentionally non-religious, that exists, I believe my answer would be the same.
Thanks to the Rev. Essie Koenig-Reinke (my daughter-in-love), pastor of Dickey Memorial Presbyterian Church, here is a brief reflection on the song that is my answer. This was originally written for the church’s Advent devotional.
“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Micah 4:3b)
“My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool.”
So begins ”Christmas in the Trenches” by singer-songwriter John McCutcheon, a song about the 1914 Christmas Truce told through the eyes of Tolliver, a fictional British soldier.
On Christmas Eve in the filth and muck of the trenches along World War I’s Western front, peace broke out.
Most accounts say it began with German soldiers singing Christmas carols. Others joined. And almost in a collective impulse, many German, British, and French soldiers put down their weapons and met in No-Man’s Land.
They sang, shared photos, told stories, and traded gifts from care packages. Some reports speak of makeshift soccer games played on Christmas Day.
Peace did not last as “with sad farewells we each began to settle back to war.”
The war raged until November 1918 and did not end war—wars and conflicts have followed to this day.
Still the Christmas Truce was a wondrous moment. of peace and and promise and possibility, of hope and justice.
Those themes resonate each year at the manger. They echo through Jesus’ life. He invites us to live into them—at Christmas and through the year.
May we so do.
Check out this call for a 2022 Christmas Trues in Ukraine.
Filed under Advent, Current Events, Family, Human Rights, Music
Late afternoon, early evening, New York City. From Arthur Ashe Stadium.
August, 2019
Along the Graybeard Trail 