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500 Words: Words Matter
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” When I was a kid, that children’s chant was a talisman to protect us from the startlingly ...
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500 Words: The Answer, My Friend…
If you’re as old as I am, you’re already singing the next line in this iconic Dylan song. You also know that the answer “blowing in the wind” is both ...
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500 Words: Fresh New Hell
The line “What fresh new hell is this?” was famously coined by the American critic Dorothy Parker when her writing was interrupted by the telephone. There’s something deeply true captured ...
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500 Words: Moral Proximity
I am an avid reader; unlike my high-minded family and friends, however, I prefer novels to non-fiction. A well-written novel can introduce me to a whole new way of understanding ...
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500 Words: Close the Language Door
I thank my lucky stars (as my mom used to say) that I have a dog. Among other things, having a dog means that I am committed, no matter how ...
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Grace in a Fractured World
This wonderful conversation between Krista Tippett and the theologian Serene Jones is WELL worth the time required to read or listen--lovely work on the move from grief to genuine mourning, ...
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Response to reading Mark 11:1-11
by Anne Voegtlen March 27, 2021 Let’s say there is a village on our path. Let’s say we are asked to go ahead, to find a colt tied by a ...
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500 Words: Fact or Feeling?
Two conversations and two questions: in the first exchange, a woman assured me that she was right in her stance about wearing/not wearing a mask because she could “feel it ...
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Pandemic Response in Four Dimensions
“Are we all going through a dark night of the soul?” he said. “That’s what one of my teachers said last week.” I have pondered that question for a month ...
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500 (plus) Words, January 2021: Taller Than a Dog
As I took the dog out for our early morning walk Friday, I spotted her best friend down the street. Dolly, whose head rises a little over 18 inches off ...
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If you love the justice of Jesus Christ more than you fear human judgment then you will seek to do compassion. Compassion means that if I see my friend and my enemy in equal need, I shall help them both equally. Justice demands that we seek and find the stranger, the broken, the prisoner and comfort them and offer them our help. Here lies the holy compassion of God that causes the devils much distress.”
— Mechthild of Magdeburg
Your heart knows the way, run in that direction.
–Rumi