Writings
I begin with a pair of stories that I choose to call signs of our time. The first was told to me by one of my younger clergy colleagues, currently serving a church in that geographic region of the state known as Saginaw Bay. It seems my friend was doing a little preparatory work with a couple contemplating matrimony.
Last Friday night, at the end of a busy day, I said prayers in my office over several pieces of pita bread packaged in plastic, along with a giant container of Welch’s grape juice. Not for my use or your consumption. But for Jeff Nelson’s use and some senior highs’ consumption. You see, Jeff served holy communion yesterday afternoon at the end of a youth event focused on world hunger. But Jeff cannot serve communion….yet.
I never knew Leo Sullivan but, according to the Detroit Free Press, he died the other day….right between Wilma Sugar and Lester Utterback. Or, as a semi-regular scanner of the death notices once said to me: “Isn’t it amazing how, day after day, all those people die in alphabetical order?” Whatever! Leo was 80 when he succumbed, one suspects to heart disease, given that memorials (in lieu of flowers) were directed to his best friend and cardiologist, Dr. Kim Eagle of the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center.
Thomas Long is a most interesting fellow who presently does full-time what I am soon to do part-time….namely, teach divinity students a little bit about preaching. In his most recent book, Testimony: Talking Ourselves Into Being Christian, he reports the following:
