Dear Eugene

I came by myself to a very crowded place; I was looking for someone who had lines in her face. I found her there but she was past all concern; I asked her to hold me, I said, "Lady, unfold me, " But she scorned me and she told me I was dead and I could never return. Dear Eugene, Beauty. We try so hard to write ourselves into her story.  Our story becomes one to try not to be written out from hers. Saturday I was in downtown looking at a Tiffany billboard.  She speaks to the world what beauty should look like, how and what we should desire.  Then she scorned me for being too serious and sent me off to a midnight from which I shall wake to find myself further from her, not for anything right or wrong I've committed from dusk till dawn, but for simply emerging from darkness to another day of inevitable decay, slip sliding away, gently written off and finally whited out. Sometimes not gently. Last night I was at home to the hospitality of a couple of ver...

Dear Eugene, Do you like the word "conversion," as in one holding up one's hand, "saying Yes to Jesus" when the music and moment feels right, as if the human heart changes like a flick of a switch, salvation a matter of having faith in one's faith? My question is too laden for it to be anything but rhetorical, I know.  And I am not trying to be cynical, even less to trivialize any Yes that is given to Jesus; we all rejoice with the angels with our own Yeses resounding in heaven when we see a life, any life, turning from darkness to light, from dying to living. But I suppose it is precisely because of how much we care about others, that we want to take a closer, honest look at the nature of how the Yeses are being called out. I know you love Anne Tyler's novels; so I assume you must have read Dorothy Allison's " Bastard out of Carolina "?  What an amazing novel, isn't it? When the protagonist of the story Ruth Anne tried t...

Dear Eugene, This past weekend I've been busy spamming my friends new and old to tell them about a new study Bible :) As I was writing the email to them, I realized how far you have taken and accompanied me on my life journey and how grateful I am every step of the way on The Way.  The truth is I would not have written an email like this if not for a pastor like you. I shall continue to multiply your faithfulness. Here is the email I wrote to them: Dear friends, If you are receiving this email, you are either in my Small Group, and/or my Book Club, or just a friend that I know who cares about reading God's Word and living in history-- His-Story . Recently I've been sharing with many of you how grateful I am for a new Study Bible that Zondervan publishes since last August, the  NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible . In this  LINK  you will find information about it, a video introduction, and also a "Preview" sampler. I  encourage you to...