World In Prayer

For more than five years now (hard to believe) I have been part of a team of people that writes weekly prayers from news of the world. This week was my week to write them. You can find the website here. 

World News This Week in Prayer -
Thursday, February 28, 2013

 O God, you are our God. Eagerly we seek you.

We look for signs of your presence in the midst of the troubles of this world. We look for answers and assurances. We realize that in our eagerness we may miss the very thing we seek. We sit in the wilderness of Lent and are tempted to leave for the promise of answers.

Help us and be with us and forgive us.

Forgive us when we do not notice your awesome presence as we continue our daily tasks.
Forgive us when we assign reasons and blame where none belongs.
Forgive us when in our impatience for answers we no longer remember the questions.

Enlighten our hearts, our minds, our spirits to see you in the midst of life and in one another.

 O God, you are our God. Eagerly we seek you throughout your world.

 We seek you in your church.

• We pray for the Roman Catholic Church as Pope Benedict XVI steps down and the church enters an uncertain future. 
• We pray for those observing the World Day of Prayer on March 1, that all may experience your gracious presence. 

 We seek you in places where there is conflict.

• We pray especially for places experiencing armed conflict: Mali, Syria, Darfur, Afghanistan, and others. 
• We pray for mineworkers in Colombia striking for better conditions and pay, and for workers at the Kusaselethu Mine in South Africa who are unhappy with union settlements. 
• We pray for homes where abuse and conflict divide and damage children and all family members. 

 We seek you in times of confusion.

• We pray for Italy as it experiences deadlock in creating a new coalition of leadership. 
• We pray for the United States as potential budget cuts may affect many lives in ways that are as yet unclear. 

 We seek you in sickness and in health.

• We pray for Brazil as they experience an increase in reports of Dengue Fever. 
• We pray for those suffering from malaria, and for those working for its eradication. 
• We pray for all those suffering from pain or illness. 

 We seek you in the world you have made.

• We pray for Australia where Cyclone Rusty has made landfall in the North West. 
• We pray for wisdom and humility as we examine our conflicting desire for sources of energy coupled with the desire to care for your creation. 

 We seek you day by day and through the night watches. We seek you in every tribe and nation, in heaven and on earth. Guide us in our seeking that we may find you and be found by you, through your son who dwelled among us, Jesus the Christ, who promised that those who seek shall find.

AMEN.

Use the full names of Harriet Ross Tubman and the women honored with her

Originally posted in a slightly different form in July 2010. I'm reposting today in honor of Harriet Tubman who is paired with Nicholas Ferrar in today's Lent Madness matchup. You can vote here.

There are worse things in the world, I know, but it gets my dander up every year.

Here's the collect for the feast of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman whose feast is July 20:

O God, whose Spirit guides us into all truth and makes us free: Strengthen and sustain us as you did your servants Elizabeth, Amelia, Sojourner, and Harriet. Give us vision and courage to stand against oppression and injustice and all that works against the glorious liberty to which you call all your children; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

So what's the problem? Let's compare it with the collect for William Reed Huntington whose feast day is one week later.

O Lord our God, we thank you for instilling in the heart of your servant William Reed Huntington a fervent love for your Church and its mission in the world; and we pray that, with unflagging faith in your promises, we may make known to all people your blessed gift of eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

So maybe it's because there are several of them on one day, you say. Let's take a look, shall we? Ah, here we go:

Keep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, after the examples of thy servants Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer; that we may live in thy fear, die in thy favor, and rest in thy peace; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

OK, so first of all, the Episcopal Church is breaking the style for the collects by leaving off the last names of these women. And secondly, they are doing it to four women who fought to see that women would be treated and respected as the equals of men.

Man, it ticks me off. I wrote to the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to point this out a couple of years ago, hoping it would be duly noted and corrected at General Convention last year. No dice.

Please pass the word along to any liturgically-minded friends. And if you are marking this feast day, please amend the collect to include their full names. This July 20th, I would like to know that at least a few churches are showing these women the respect they deserve.

Why, yes, Hollywood, we DID see your boobs

It was hard to see in the midst of the almost-equal-opportunity offensiveness fest that was the Oscars last night, but Seth McFarlane actually did do a good job of hosting -- if by "good job" you mean clear, engaged, moved things along. But if by hosting you mean something more akin to hospitality, greeting one and all and making them feel welcomed and comfortable, well, he failed miserably on that point.

Here's the thing, though, that I'm actually grateful for: McFarlane revealed the racism and sexism that exists throughout the system that pats itself on the back and calls itself liberal and enlightened.

McFarlane is just the front man for a much larger system. A system that convinces women to undress in the name of art and then sings a puerile little song saying, "We saw your boobs!" A system that claims Quentin Tarantino is starting an important conversation about slavery and then jokes about how Daniel Day-Lewis would try to free Don Cheadle from slavery.

I agree with this writer who says

The best moment of Seth MacFarlane's Oscars hosting gig may have come late in the night when, in announcing Meryl Streep, he said "our next presenter needs no introduction" ... and then just walked away. If only he'd kept his mouth shut more frequently.

Buzzfeed did an in the moment run-down of sexist moments at the Oscars that are quite stark when you see them strung one after another. Again, I'm not happy about it, but I think it is good for these things to be revealed.

And let's remember this is not about McFarlane, but about a system that rewards this kind of speech. Sure, you can make sure McFarlane doesn't present next year, but what do we need to do to change things?

Unfortunately, it's going to be a long slog of speaking the truth to power over and over again. It means looking for the real causes and not just the presenting issues. It means putting our money where our mouth is. It means listening to those who are offended and understanding why and changing our behaviors. It means making mistakes. It means a hell of a lot of work.

In the meantime, there are moments of grace. Such as this one.

Made new friends tonite! Power actress!!! twitter.com/SamuelLJackson…
— Samuel L. Jackson (@SamuelLJackson) February 25, 2013

Go, Quvennzhane! Make sure they know your name.

Your Zombie Apocalypse Public Service Announcement of the Day

So sensible! I'm convinced! Get me some baby chicks!

Although I have to say I would not feed my chickens any human corpses of any kind. I mean, how do you know if they're non-infected? And the last thing you want are zombie chickens.

Filched from the BackyardChickens.com forum.

Various & Sundry: Supermodels, Martyrs, Poets, and other animals

*sigh* It's been one of those weeks that's clunked along. I had lots of plans of things to blog, but, as you see, it didn't happen. Probably because I never did get that handsome dose. But I do have a few things left lying about the place that are worth sharing, late as it is, so here you go.

For example, there are good reasons I didn't become a supermodel. Again, the handsome dose would have made my career as a supermodel more likely. But there are other legitimate reasons, as Nancy Kho points out.

I don't know if you've been following Lent Madness, but this week the martyrs have been beating the tar out of the more naturally-death-inclined. Yesterday, however, in a match-up between John Donne and the martyr Agnes of Rome, Donne charmed the votes out of people, which broke the martyrs' win streak. Does it have something to do with his erotic poetry?

This leads very nicely into Book Riot's Date, Dump, or Marry: Famous Author Version. Your choices? I'm thinking to date Jane Austen (she would be an excellent dinner companion, don't you think?), dump Poe (I mean, creepy, although I'd worry I'd be the inspiration for some gothic character), and marry Dick Francis. He seems stable and unpretentious.

Oscar fanatics and film buffs may want to read this analysis of Django Unchained. I haven't seen the movie, and don't plan to, so I am in no position to opine, but it strikes me as a really important perspective.

I really liked what Beth Kanter had to say about the importance of being data-informed rather than data-driven. And I especially appreciated this article on the seven  habits of highly effective mediocre people:

Being mediocre doesn’t mean you won’t change the world. It means being honest with yourself and the people around you. And being honest at every level is really the most effective habit of all if you want to have massive success.

In law enforcement news,

Prosecutors in England, prepping for a case, repeatedly contacted a police department for details on the arrest—specifically, they demanded a witness statement from "PD Peach," an officer who assisted. The problem is, PD stands for Police Dog, and Peach is an adorable German Shepherd, and as such is incapable of reading or writing.

Well, maybe, maybe not, as this police report shows:

Perhaps Peach had someone speaking for him, something Pat Derby did quite well. Ms. Derby, who died last week, was "a former animal trainer for television shows like “Lassie” and “Flipper” who became a crusader against animal exploitation in entertainment and founded of one of the largest privately operated wildlife sanctuaries in the United States." I read two obituaries for her this week, one in the Times, and one in the Telegraph. In both, she sounds tough-minded and realistic. "Throughout her life, she remained acutely conscious of the inherent shortcomings of raising wild animals in captivity: 'You can never replace the wild. You can only make the prison as comfortable as possible.'"

I don't know. I think this bucket of sloths looks pretty cozy.

Best. Fortune Cookie. Ever.

Technially, it's the best fortune cookie fortune ever, but that didn't make as good a title. The truth is the cookie itself was just about average. The fortune, though, was fantastic! Here it is:

Try it with several different line readings. Also, what do you think is in a handsome dose?

Various & Sundry: Lent, Valentines, and Porky Goodness

As you might guess, Lent Madness has come to the fore in the past couple of days. Madness is right! If you haven't checked it out yet, do! And vote -- for whomever you choose. And here's an old post I wrote on 4 things I learned about elections from Lent Madness.

It's been in the 70's around here the past couple of days, but I hear in some parts of the country it's this season called winter. Here's a video my sister made of digging out her car in Portland, Maine.


Now, see, that doesn't look that hard!

It was, of course, also Valentine's Day. And though I did like these Puritan Valentines, as a former Presbyterian, it was the #thingsCalvinistssayonValentinesDay tweets that really set my heart a-flutter.

#ThingsCalvinistsSayonValentinesDay - May I call you Grace, because you are irresistible.
— Relevant Church Guy (@UberRelevant) February 12, 2013

Trust me on this one.

Then again, nothing says Valentine's Day like porky goodness. Wouldn't you like to get something like this instead of a dozen roses?

Gourmet Bacon Assortment This trio of gourmet-quality bacon will light up the eyes and tastebuds of bacon fanatics you know and love. Features the following Nueske's smoked bacon varieties in convenient vacuum-sealed packages: (1) Our famous Applewood-smoked Bacon, 16 oz., (2) Applewood-smoked Peppered Bacon, hand coated with fresh-cracked Tellicherry peppercorns, 16 oz., and (3) New Wild Cherrywood-smoked Bacon, made from an all-natural recipe with no artificial ingredients, 12 oz. A great way to sample the best and choose your favorite!

Mmmm...bacon... Yes, I am now following a purveyor of smoked meats on Twitter.

I haven't been filling you in on the obituaries recently, but there were two excellent ones this week of extraordinary women.

The first, Sarah Baring, was a London socialite who spent much of the war translating German documents at Bletchley Park. She knew German because she'd been at finishing school in Munich where she and a friend "would sit at a neighbouring table and pull faces at [Hitler and his entourage]. They knew us by sight and knew we were English, so they just pretended we weren’t there. We weren’t arrested, because at that stage the Germans were still being frightfully nice to us."

At Bletchley, "Sarah Norton worked on the Naval Section index, helping to provide details of the U-boats to Hut 8, run at that time by Alan Turing, of whom she once said: '[He] was immensely shy, especially of girls... I once offered him a cup of tea, [and] he shrank back as if I’d got measles or something. He was wonderful. We were all very proud of him.'”

The work was gruelling, and Sarah Norton and her colleagues took their pleasures where they could: “One afternoon, we decided to give Jean Campbell-Harris, who later became Baroness Trumpington, a ride in a large laundry basket on wheels that was normally used to move secret files. We launched it down the long corridor where it gathered momentum by the second. To our horror, Jean suddenly disappeared, basket and all, through some double swing doors, crashing to a halt in the men’s lavatories. A serious reprimand was administered and our watches were changed so we were distributed among a more sober group.”

There's more, but you'll have to read it yourself.

Also this week, I learned of the death of Keiko Fukada, whom I had read about a year and a half ago when, at age 98, she became the first woman ever to receive a 10th degree black belt in Judo. "Standing 4ft 10in tall and weighing less than 100lb, Keiko Fukuda took up judo in her native Japan when she was in her early twenties having been schooled in the traditional arts of calligraphy, flower arrangement and the intricacies of the tea ceremony." She has been teaching judo, mostly to women, here in the San Francisco Bay Area since before I was born.

A documentary about her is called Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful. Sounds like a good way to be.

The 2086-year-old man

Everyone else I know is posting very reverential and reflective meditations on Ash Wednesday and Lent and such-like. Me, I just wanted to tell you about this absolutely fantastic interview I heard with Mel Brooks on the WTF podcast with Marc Maron.

If you have ever loved Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein, you owe it to yourself to listen to this. First of all, it's an amazing conversation with someone who has lived a lot of life. Secondly, you learn lots of inside scoop on Brooks himself and on his movies. Such as:

• What was the one scene he cut from Blazing Saddles
• Who he originally asked to play the Gene Wilder role
• How Young Frankenstein came to be written
• Where they got all the gadgets from Young Frankenstein
• Brooks' role in movies such as The Elephant Man, Frances, and The Fly
• and so much more

As I said, this was an absolutely amazing interview. And then, if you're a deep comedy geek, you'll want to follow up with the next interview with Carl Reiner, Mel's straight man in the 2,000 year old man albums.  

Yes, yes, yes, you need to get through about 30 seconds of profanity at the beginning of the podcast. Trust me, it's so worth it. 

Enjoy.

What Mr. Rogers taught me about the Transfiguration

Transfiguration by Raphael

The son of friends of mine got a concussion right before Christmas. And then another one. After he got the all clear and came home from the hospital, he suddenly started getting seizures. His eyesight blurred and his speech slurred. He got excruciating headaches.

Tests showed nothing wrong. Doctors said that there was a miscommunication between brain and body: that the pain had no cause, but the brain was getting the message that it was there. Because there was no actual cause for the pain, they could do nothing to stop it. The pain was so horrible that his father prayed that he could die just to end it.

So you can imagine that I was drawn to the second half of the Transfiguration story in the gospel, in which Jesus comes down from the mountain and is met with a distraught father whose son is having seizures.

It seems to me there is very little to separate the transfiguration into glory and the transfiguration into agony. Both involve the removing of a veil. Both involve truly seeing the person that stands in front of you.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a video of Mr. Rogers being interviewed by, of all people, Joan Rivers. Towards the end of the interview (at the 6:00 mark), Rivers invited Mr. Rogers to sing "It's You I Like." He says, "I'll sing it to you," and she says, "Oh, no, I'll die." He proceeds to sing directly to Rivers,

It's you I like.
It's not the things you wear.
It's not the way you do your hair,
but it's you I like.

And Rivers, who has faced every kind of insult and heckling, building an impervious shell of self-mockery over a long career, proceeds to pull a sweater over her head to hide from the directness of being seen. And in being seen, I at least get a glimpse of a transfigured Joan Rivers I had never seen before.



Mr. Rogers, it seems to me, has an amazing gift for seeing the person who is standing in front of him. All the time. Every time. And I think the transfiguration is in the seeing of a person's true personhood.

Jesus' words in response to the father's plea are shocking, and at first I did not find much comfort there: "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?" I found myself praying to Jesus what he was saying that for? And I don't know if this is the answer or not, I have nothing to back me up, but here's what I'm wondering:

I noticed that the father shouted "from the crowd." And one of the things he shouted was that he had "begged your disciples" to heal his son, but they couldn't.

So then I wondered, why was the father simply sent back to the crowd? How would it have been if the disciples had said, "We are sorry that we don't have the power to heal your son. Wait here until Jesus comes down and we'll talk with him about what to do."

I wonder now if the reason Jesus is angry is that He recognizes a group of people that do not see one another. When Jesus came down, did he truly see this man in his agony? Is he saying to the disciples and the crowd, "Why on God' green earth do you not see what I am seeing?" And to the man, "Bring me your son. Because I see you."

When I talk about being seen, I'm not suggesting oversharing. What I mean is, how can we look at one another and recognize there is a whole history there, of suffering and of glory, beyond that momentary encounter. How can we do a better job of truly seeing one another?

This is a very abridged (and somewhat changed) version of a sermon I preached yesterday. Your continued prayers for Robert are greatly appreciated. He is recovering, but there is a long way to go.

Whatcha doing?

Well, I was trying to do research for my write up on Martha, who is one of my peeps for Lent Madness this year. Why? Do you think I should be doing something else?

Various & Sundry: What I read when I should have been writing the first round Lent Madness bios

I finally turned in the last of my Lent Madness first-round bios today. All that writing this week meant...a whole lot of web surfing. Here's some of the stuff that distracted me I think you will find interesting.

Let's start with the important stuff: Camel hit by car on Bailey Road in Concord. Yes, California. Yes, a real camel. As you see. I'm happy to report the camel is apparently fine.

"He's fine, he's hot and his adrenaline's pumping, but he's fine," Ferrante [who owns the trailer] said. "I have never done this before, so I can put (rescuing a camel) on my resume."

I'm sure that will impress at the next job interview. No report on the state of the minivan that hit the camel. Hope they weren't headed somewhere important because that's a tale that would not pass muster.

Also important: celebrating 80 years of marriage, as this couple did last November. John (101) and Ann (97)  Betar defied their parents' wishes to get married in 1932. They are being honored by Worldwide Marriage Encounter. "It's quite an honor," John told the Daily News, "but I don't know what it's for."

Nancy Kho wonders about what we lose when we don't need to wonder about anything any more. She asks, "will our future problem solvers – aka the kid sitting at her homework desk right now Googling 'Ideas for experiments for science fair' - have enough experience at Not Knowing to do the job? At understanding that feeling completely unmoored and fumbling around in the dark may be exactly what’s needed to find a tricky or non-obvious answer to a hard problem?" Gosh, I don't know. Where can I find the answer?

PeaceBang had two terrific posts this week. The first, in response to those people coming to the church for financial assistance because they don't want to be dependent on Government, is a real barn-burner. And the second, as Laura Ingalls Wilder endures the current blizzard in New England, is hilarious.

Mary and I are thinking that maybe Ma forgot to refill her prescription for anxiety medication but we are obediently stripping the beds. Where will we find dry hay for fresh ticking? The roads are bad, so a trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond is out of the question.

Andrew Sullivan has some thoughts about how to create actual change  and small business owner Beth Schillaci invites others to embrace your smallness.

I've started following Solemn Hulk on Twitter. He's still considering his Lenten vows.

HULK GIVING UP RAGE FOR LENT. OR MAYBE CHOCOLATE. OR MAYBE FACEBOOK. HULK HATE DECISIONS.
— SOLEMN HULK (@SOLEMNHULK) February 5, 2013

Me too, Hulk. I hear ya.

The Rev. Judy Upham: Love and the long haul

As you may know, I'm one of the so-called Celebrity Bloggers for Lent Madness, the yearly competition where saints fight it out to see who wins the Golden Halo. I'm writing up the bios for my first round picks and this morning was doing some research on Jonathan Myrick Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian shot and killed in 1965 while participating in the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama.

Photo taken by Jonathan Daniels

But as I did so, I noticed that he had not been the only seminarian there, and I wondered what happened to his fellow seminarian, Judith Upham.

God bless Google, which led me to this interview with the Rev. Judith Upham, now 70, who still serves as an assisting priest at St. Alban's, Arlington, TX. And I found myself moved to tears as I realized that, after leaving Alabama, Upham had far more to fight.

Upham spent time as a director of religious education, then earned a degree in social work. When General Convention approved ordaining women as deacons in 1970, she said, “for me it was like bells ringing.” 

She began working for women’s ordination to the priesthood, becoming a founding member of the Episcopal Women’s Caucus and serving as an alternate deputy at the 1973 General Convention. She was ordained a deacon in 1975, a priest on Epiphany 1977.

Note, too, that Arlington, where Rev. Upham now works, is in the Diocese of Fort Worth which Episcopal Church watchers will know was a diocese that refused to ordain women and whose bishop decamped, claiming the diocese was under the jurisdiction of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. Not surprisingly, her work there is reconciliation.

On Sunday, when we heard the reading from 1 Corinthians 13, I was struck by how many descriptors of love include the long haul. It's not "love is kind, love is patient," but "love is patient, love is kind," and it struck me that this was key to understanding the work of love. That the work of love requires endurance and a grasp of the big picture, rather than instant gratification. The arc of the moral universe is long, as Martin Luther King said, but it bends toward justice. Because, I would say, the arc of the moral universe depends upon love which "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

I am not about to take anything away from Jonathan Daniels and his witness and sacrifice, but I want especially today to celebrate the long work of love exhibited by the Rev. Upham and wish her every blessing in her continued ministry. Thank you for your endurance.

How to use Twitter correctly, the Groundhog Day edition

I suggest you read the whole thing on John Scalzi's blog.

Various & Sundry: Technical difficulties, ending in hope and sloth

We've had a rash of technical difficulties here at Infusion HQ. First, my laptop had a corrupt hard drive that needed replacing; then the wifi vanished. I just got off a lovely chat with Rodilyn at Comcast who helped get the internet connection working again. Thank you, Rodilyn! Oh, and Computer 1 in Benicia is top notch. Love those guys.

OK! So here's some stuff that's been lying around the joint while I've been doing other things, like getting the computer up and running.

Let's hear it for The Onion! More specifically for the AV Club, which asks in all seriousness Is Mister Rogers' Neighborhood the greatest television show ever made? The writer make a strong case that yes, yes it is.


Ta-Nehisi Coates has been reading and blogging about a book called Sweet Land of Liberty, exploring civil rights struggles in the North. This post in particular, about the role of housing discrimination in denying blacks economic mobility was an eye-opener. The implications and ramifications through the present day are stunning when you think about them.

Please note, this book is not the children's book Sweet Land of Liberty by Callista Gingrich.

Tom Murphy, an international aid blogger I respect a lot, wrote a post this week about the recent trend in aid organizations to emphasize the good news instead of using tales of tragedy and woe in fundraising efforts. He asks, "is a focus on good news any less likely to distort the picture than a focus on bad news?"

 I loved this story showing This is what happens when you leave the Westboro Baptist Church. Taken from Libby Phelps' Facebook Page, it's a profound reminder that people can change, and the best way to do it is to love them into it. 

Finally, what's a Friday night without a good sloth photo or two?

Source: 9gag.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

Let the congregation saw Awwwww...

Love song to the Rogans

Last week, I got to see two people who have been saints in my life: Don and Sally Rogan. I hope they don't mind that I reveal their full names. Given that John Green already did so, as he explained that Don was the model for his character The Old Man in Looking for Alaska, I think I'm pretty safe.

I was in Ohio on business anyway, so I can't say that it was particularly good of me to see them. It was, in fact, plain old selfishness on my part, taking advantage of the opportunity to visit, and taking further advantage, as I seem to do every time I see them, of their generosity and hospitality.

I lived in Gambier, Ohio for little more than a year as the assistant rector and Episcopal chaplain at Kenyon College. The Rogans were some of the first people I met when I arrived for my interviews, as they hosted me during my stay. There were ladybugs in the bedroom and I took it as a good sign. On the other hand, the Friday I was there for my interviews, the Kenyon Carillon ringers played "Eensy Weensy Spider," which I also took for a good sign.

Perhaps those two signs were incompatible, or perhaps I was simply putting too much stock in insect/arachnid-related activity because, ladybugs or no, that was a tough tough year that has colored my ministry ever since, for good or for ill. It is the year, as I wrote earlier, that I'm still grieving, though I'm not sure that's totally accurate.

The Rogans remain without question the best thing that happened to me while I was there.

At the time, I had a retired racing greyhound named Sirocco, an ex-jock who loved to sit on the couch and tell you about his days on the track. He developed a limp that I and the vet thought was arthritis, but turned out to be bone cancer. I lived in a second floor apartment. I could have him put down immediately, or find some place for Sirocco not to have to climb stairs.

I called the Rogans. "Oh dear, oh dear," I remember Don saying when I told him what was going on. It can't have been an hour later before they called me back and invited me and my dog to stay with them in their house, for the rest of Sirocco's life. Was it one month? More? I don't remember. I just remember how completely I was welcomed, with no reluctance, no reserve.

Last week when I went to stay with them, I posted about it on Facebook. A friend, who had been a student when I was a chaplain, wrote, "If you are staying in their guest room, that is MY BED. But I will share with you." They taught all of us to share. I will forever be grateful.

Here's John Green's great Rogan tale. Well, one of them. I'm sure he has many more. I know I do.