About

This blog is a collection of my reflections as a pastor.  I am learning to live faithfully with a community inside and outside the walls of a church building.  I spent seventeen years serving as a rural church pastor, and am now serving as a transitional (interim) pastor for a congregation in a small city.  My ordination is held by the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.  I am classified as a Minister of Word & Sacrament or Teaching Elder.

The inspiration for the tag line comes from a favorite poem.  I share it here for your edification.

Lucinda Matlock

BY EDGAR LEE MASTERS

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,

And played snap-out at Winchester.

One time we changed partners,

Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,

And then I found Davis.

We were married and lived together for seventy years,

Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,

Eight of whom we lost

Ere I had reached the age of sixty.

I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,

I made the garden, and for holiday

Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,

And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,

And many a flower and medicinal weed —

Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.

At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,

And passed to a sweet repose.

What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,

Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?

Degenerate sons and daughters,

Life is too strong for you —

It takes life to love Life.