From St. Francis Episcopal Church in Rutherfordton, North Carolina last week I drove to the Outer Banks (OBX) of North Carolina and spent four delicious days over the Memorial Day weekend at a beautiful National Park Service campground at Cape Point on Hatteras Island enjoying the sun and warmth as well as the sea and sand and catching up on my reading. Continue reading →

Being familiar with the words of Jesus in the Gospels doesn’t make it any easier.  Doesn’t mean I have greater insight or that somehow they are less disconcerting and perplexing at times.  In many ways, being more familiar with these words means that they cannot be forgotten or obscured by all the other things that life brings in to mute the challenge of such words.  Continue reading →

I am now in Rutherfordton, North Carolina where I performed at St. Francis Episcopal Church last night for a particularly engaged and appreciative (and quite large) gathering of people, a number of whom are doing EFM (Education for Ministry).  There have been a number of EFM groups attend in various places I have been to, and they always seem to be particularly clued in, perhaps because they have already studied Mark’s Gospel in some depth.

St Francis Episcopal Church in Rutherfordton, NC. Note the similarity of the lychgate with that of St. Francis-in-the-Wood. Continue reading →

“They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them, and they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid.”  So begins the third “act” of my dramatization Testament of a Naked Man.  A striking image as we begin the journey, or the final part of the journey, to the cross.  I imagine Jesus resolute, jaw set, striding into whatever awaits him; and according to the story, he had a pretty good idea of what awaited him, as is made explicit in the next verses when he takes the twelve aside again and tells them what is to happen to him. Continue reading →

It’s been a very full week, to say the least beginning with last Saturday evening, May 2 when I was in Ardmore, Oklahoma for the first of two performances of “Testament of a Naked Man” within 24 hours – preaching there on the Sunday morning (at three services) and then hot-footing it down to Sherman, Texas to perform at 3pm.

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