The Late Arrival

"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25:40 The breeze whispers through open windows on a clear summer day. It carries with it the aroma of freshly cut grass and the lawn mower’s steady drone as my husband paces back and forth, following our backyard’s perimeter. The drone abruptly stops. In minutes he appears at the back door. Get out here NOW , he shout-whispers. I race outside following where he leads, praying we’re not looking for detached toe in the grass. There were no toes, just bunnies. We coo and fight back every urge to pick up the baby bunnies because we know their mumma will return for them. And she did. Thirty minutes later, they were gone. ********************* The skies are purplish gray. Scattered spots of orange promise sunshine’s return after the afternoon’s violent windstorm. Sidewalks are littered with snapped branches too weak to cling to the

...and I was so short, they’d always give me a crate to stand on so everyone in church could see me do my Easter speech. I don’t remember when I learned that story about my mom. It’s like I’ve always known it. I was the youngest kid in our family, and by the time I came along, she wasn’t doing speeches in church anymore. The last time I remembered her speaking was at the annual Women’s Day Celebration. Standing on things, circa 1930 I knew she was preparing a speech for that day and I’d hear her reciting it from time to time, but teenagers don’t think long and hard about anything outside of themselves and their favorite rock group. I honestly didn’t think much of it. After all, she’d direct the choir or sing solos on occasion, so it wasn’t a completely foreign concept to see her up in front of everyone. For Women’s Day Sunday, all women in the congregation would be decked out in white, some wearing what I call Baptist Hats . The big extravagant kind, some tast

Every Sunday, our Pastor leads us in a variety of prayer petitions for a variety of different things: healing for the sick, comfort to the grieving, the Church’s faithfulness…and leaders of this country and those around the world. We usually respond “Hear our prayer.” The current political campaigns or the Silly Season – whatever you want to call it – has me scared. Really. Not scared of a splintering political party at war with itself; but scared – truly scared of the mentality the campaigning has called forth. In particular, campaigning has called out an ugly, racist, xenophobic, sexist mentality which up until this point in time had been operating on a low-grade level. And I’ve experienced that low-grade ugliness. I’ve been called a nigger; been stopped for Driving While Black; been told as a child ballerina that black bodies weren’t made for classical dance. When I married my husband – a white guy – we experienced ugliness and hostility as a couple. After we had our