A week or so ago my iPhone beeped and buzzed, and the caller was Alaina Smith, staff assistant at Westminster Presbyterian Church where usually you’d find Annette and me Sunday mornings. Alaina told me that a woman had just stopped by her office, carrying a book, The Plover by Bryan Doyle, and reporting she had … Continue reading The Return of The Plover →

My previous post is about hermitic ruminating; now, the contrast to that aloneness. About the best thing that happens when we’re studying the Bible together in a small group is to have an ancient scripture selection suddenly come to life in and for here and now. I’m blessed, I mean really blessed, to have two … Continue reading Where Two or Three Are Gathered. . . →

I’ve been ruminating, a word I love. Ruminating—it restores an old image of cows in our barnyard after milking, a picture of peace after their busy day feeding in a meadow and their heavy milk burden has been lifted, chewing cuds and drooling and thus restoring their supply of milk from pasture greens stored in … Continue reading Rumination, With the Help of Contented Cows →

A few weeks ago in an Old Ticker blog I wrote a Pride Month tribute to a deceased friend, Warren James, celebrated by many in Portland for his early, long, unrelenting struggle for his own rights and the rights of others like him, a gay man. In this post during Pride Month, I seek to … Continue reading Andrew Freeman, a Tribute →

It was not a particularly demanding play, I remember few of the details, but the core effect of the play and its most dramatic moment are clear in my memory, that scene somehow indelibly etched there in whatever parcel of gray matter stores the most extraordinary snapshots in time. Names of the actors are stored … Continue reading Construction →

Like all of us there, he is old. He sits at a table, eating, alone. “May we join you?” I ask, tentatively, unsure of his response. “Oh yes, please do,” he replies. “Our names are Jim and Annette Anderson,” I tell him. “I am Warren James, and I am gay,” he counters. I do my best … Continue reading Warren James, a Pride Month Tribute →

Reading the arguments of a learned academic—it could as well have been of an equally learned disputant for the opposition—confidently setting forth proof, which he apparently considered complete and faultless, of the Bible’s restrictions on gay inclusion and affirmation, I am whisked backwards in time 70+ years to a second floor classroom in the northwest … Continue reading Q.E.D. →

Kara Newell has life-long history of Quaker life, worship, and service. With her husband, John, also a life-long Quaker, she attends Quaker Bible study at Multnomah Friends Meeting House—as do I—early Monday mornings. Last week news had just begun flashing on our telephone screens of the killings at the Gaza border. After several minutes of … Continue reading Kara, Gaza, Jerusalem, 1 Samuel →

Because I’d read so slowly over several months I’d overlooked the narrator of Chicago foreshadowing his leaving early in the story. While berating myself for not marking the page, I finally found the passage on pages 116 and 117, where he describes his leaving as not nearly as composed as he claims at the end. … Continue reading Brian Doyle, Chicago, Redux →

Kris gave it to me at Christmas, and now, the middle of May, I have just read its last words. Why so long? It has been my reading while riding buses and trains where, strangely, I find the least distraction of anywhere, but also, it is not a book for hurried racing to its ending … Continue reading Ex Libris Brian Doyle, Chicago, 2016 →