Robert Frost was the first poet I really enjoyed while in school. That’s probably not surprising. Not being by nature inclined to poetry, I found that Frost’s lyricism – and his popularity – made him more accessible to me. So I, like many, many others, knew him through beloved poems...

I have been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, hoping to finish it before going to see to Steven Spielberg’s adaptation, Lincoln. (We’ll see if I can wait that long.) One of the central themes of the book is that Lincoln had a...

Baptism is on my mind. Tomorrow is the Sunday of the Baptism of our Lord, and so last week I wrote a column on that for Working Preacher. This morning’s devotional reading happened to be Luke’s brief description of Jesus’ baptism as well. And near the beginning of the week I wrote a...

Tomorrow, January 6, is the Feast of the Epiphany which falls this year on Sunday. It is the occasion, according to tradition, when the magi from the East reach the newborn Christ and offer him both their gifts and their worship. As is often true of the gospel accounts, they both describe...

Best known for her young adult fiction such as A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle also wrote poetry. A friend sent her poem “First Coming” a few weeks ago and while probably prepared as an advent poem, it nevertheless seems a great choice for this, the 5th day of Christmas. I love the...