Quick Note: This a letter relating to the First Sunday in Christmas, Dec. 28. I’ve posted on the Christmas Eve and Day readings here. Dear Partner in Preaching, Sometimes, all we can do is sing. This past fall we observed the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And so there were the requisite reviews in the news media of the events leading up to, surrounding, and following that remarkable and largely unforeseen event. One of the items that was routinely left out of those reviews, however, was the weeks of peaceful protests by the citizens of Leipzig that led up to the fall. Gathering on Monday evenings by candlelight...

I thought I’d mix in some Advent hymns for our poetry this month. Nevertheless, the first poem and hymn that I thought of is a beloved Christmas carol. Perhaps because it’s so darn cold in Minnesota right now, the carol that keeps coming to mind is Christina Rossetti’s “In the Bleak Mid-Winter.” All of Rossetti’s work is so melodic, fluid, and vivid, and makes great reading or singing. It’s such a wonderful song that there are some fantastic covers by pop artists like James Taylor and Dan Fogelberg that have helped to make it popular well beyond the church. But my favorite version is probably by Shawn Colvin. There is something...

I love words. I love what you can do with words. I love playing with words, shaping ideas with them, communicating things that matter to me through them, and affecting the thoughts and feelings of others with them. For all these reasons and more, I love words. But not always. As I’ve said before, I don’t always love words when they come as poems. When words come in poems, they don’t seem to follow the rules, or at least they operate by different rules, rules I haven’t mastered and don’t feel competent at. That’s, in part, why the Saturday poetry post has been important to me. It’s a way to stretch, to push myself to work a...

Sometimes it takes an outsider to remind you of who you are and what you should be about. It helps, of course, if that outsider is keenly observant, a generous critic, and gifted with words and, in this case, musical notes. Such is the case with this week’s Unlikely Christmas Carol, “The Rebel Jesus,” by Jackson Browne. Let’s start with Browne as keen observer. A day after describing Mary’s Magnificat as a “rebel song,” I can’t help but appreciate Browne’s perception that her son came to question the status quo, challenge the authorities and customs of the day, and generally turn things upside down. But Browne isn’t...