Good sense tells us avoid the highs,count the cost and be wise.Reluctance, a good sign, says donot go unless you really have to,but inspiration says yes, we must.Inspiration says yes, just trust.There in the roots of the mountain,even there, in trouble again,in a place of water and stone,we feel our way in the dark,clinging to […]

The birds get fed every Sunday. Three hours is all we can give them in the church auditorium. Some want to stay all day but Paul and I chase them away. As one of the homeless walks toward the church, Paul stops him verbally. “Mister! Hey! Mister!” Reluctantly the man turns around, not because he […]

Color balance can be tricky. Light from a window full of blue sky may not mix with illumination from yellow incandescents. Your photo will look unsettled. That is the common wisdom, but like most rules, it is not always true. Variety can be a blessing. Colors can harmonize. If you are eating soup, a spoon […]

On March 3, on March 12, and again on March 19, 2026, Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Wilmington, North Carolina published my Photo Prayers as three of its Lenten Reflections. That’s a bit of a thrill for this author, to see his words and images find a new audience among Christians observing Lent, a season […]

We are in for at least seven days of real winter here in Delaware — highs in the twenties, lows in the teens and single digits. I am delighted! Having lived eleven years on the California coast and thirty in central Texas, I missed the winters I knew as a child in Rhode Island and […]

In the half hour just before church begins, signs are turned around and banners hung. I pick up the high-class litter on the sidewalk outside the gallery empty of art. I order a hot mocha latte to go. A happy family of three walks away to the east. To the west, three police cars, their […]

What do you make of it? It happened on Christmas Eve, at midnight mass. As I looked around the crowd, I was surprised to see that every face felt familiar, even the faces of total strangers. I recognized each person as someone with whom I had shared my life even though I did not know […]

Every year, midnight on New Year’s Eve never happens for thousands of people. It can be unsettling. Midnight never happened for my wife and I in the year 2000. In the last hour of the year, we were driving east. It was 11:30 p.m. or so on December 31, New Year’s Eve, and we were […]

One reason I celebrate Christmas is to acknowledge the mystery of the spiritual become material; God made manifest. The highest spirituality — beyond our comprehension and beyond our proper naming — has been made individual, human, and cuddly: Jesus, a newborn baby in a manger. This is a theological concept so strange many cannot comprehend […]