Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, Last Saturday we were building garden boxed in front of our church, and finally filled them with soil donated by the city.  Part of the condition of this most generous gift is that we'll involve the community in the garden planting, growing and flourishing. We worked hard non-stop all day, and at the end were left with maybe one-third of what was given us, which is a lot.  I wrote up a sign "Free Soil: Full of Grace" and staked it on the soil. People told me after I left that in about half an hour the soil was cleaned up.  Some related to me specifics about size of vehicle that came and the enthusiasm in the air, which smelt of PNE farmhouse. I wonder if Jesus were there, whether he would come up with a parable.  I wonder if it would go something like this (by the way, I was not there; so the following is a complete fabrication on my part): ******* There was a church at the fringe of a marginalized neighborhood, small in ways more than on...

Dear Eugene, It's six in the morning now. I'm facing a forest, in the cold but not too cold, in almost complete darkness, scribbling on a page that hopefully I could make out the content when someone eventually shines a light on it, whoever that's "out there," taking care of this light-giving business. When you're standing at the edge between light and darkness, you wonder.  You imagine. You seek to see, to know, must to not fall into despair. The forest is dark.  Shapeless. Who's to know if light will ever come again?  No one can be sure.  No one promised us. Yet I'm standing here like a covenant was made, not least to me personally, and I'm banking on its fulfillment, for a miracle to come. It doesn't escape me that I can write in this state of blindness only because I've learned how to during the many previous gifted episodes of seeing.  Had I been in complete darkness all along I wouldn't be able to discern there's...