Did you know that this blog is almost five years old? My very first post was a fairly silly categorization of Christmas songs. In that post I admitted my love for “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which I think is the best [secular] Christmas song ever. It would seem that many recording artists agree […]

So our thirdborn’s alias on this blog is SBJ, or sweet baby J, which makes his name pretty easy to figure out if you know the song.
What you may not know is that little she-who-is also has a song with her name in the title, and which also contains the word “Sweet” in it.
We […]

So it’s a Clear Channel Christmas again—the holiday hits have been non-stop since about a week ago. Since it’s such an early Thanksgiving, this year’s CCC season may be the longest on record. This year in honor of those broadcast heroes, I am working on a complicated theorem to explain CC programming.
I think the […]

So we have this emphasis during Lent on the creative and liturgical arts, and our foundation scripture is the anointing of Jesus in which he says, “She has done a beautiful thing for me.” The idea being that we are all called to do “a beautiful thing” for God, regardless of our particular gifts or […]

1) If I could sing like anyone, it would be Aretha Franklin.

2) I would love to sing the song _________________. I can’t answer this, because anything I would love to sing, I do. I may not sing it proficiently, but I do it.
3) It would be really cool to sing at Carnegie Hall.
4) If I […]

The questions are simple, the answers unlimited. Go!
Who are you, who who…
What is love? baby don’t hurt me…
When will our eyes meet? When will I touch you?
Where did our love go?
Why… [hmm, can’t think of one for why, other than the Annie Lennox song of the same name. Leave your suggestion in the comments]
Tunefully yours,
RM

So, my love-hate relationship with the 24/7 Christmas music we’re all subjected treated to is well documented. It gets too sentimentally sticky-sweet sometimes, yet I find myself unable to resist it. And so…
1. A favorite ’secular’ Christmas song.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. There are many versions and most of them are good, except the […]

This is just a note to thank you for providing us with nonstop Christmas music during this month—and half of last month too!!!! More than the shopkeepers, cashiers, stockers, Wal-Mart greeters, more even than the Salvation Army bell-ringers who provide a convenient place for me to put loose change and gum wrappers—in this season of […]

Courtesy of NotShyChiRev…
1. Describe the last play or musical you saw. (At least provide the what, when, where, and why). What was your opinion of it?
That would be Spamalot at the National Theater a month or so ago. Mamala bought us really good tickets because, well, we needed it! I LOVED it. Funny and irreverent. […]

Ten years ago I was living in Houston working for a technical writing, training and consulting firm.
One spring day I was driving home from a client site, and I was feeling surly and restless because I didn’t want to be writing policies and procedures for big petroleum companies anymore.
A song came on the radio that […]

talk to me about the waiting…
mostly I crouch, head bowed, eyes closed
against the soft black, safe in liquid suspense.
but even in the nothing there are constant somethings:
a fluid symphony, simmering, rolling, rushing past;
a metronome beating out the time,
world without end—and a voice:
hushed murmur, burbling laugh,
distant yet irresistible.
and then, at certain times,
I am bathed in […]

Ah, evenings. Dinner’s done; I can hear mommy’s meal percolating away, digesting nicely… wonderful white noise to accompany my evening nap, while she sits and does whatever quiet thing she does all evening. Then she will lay down for her own sleep, at which time I will be refreshed, full of energy and ready for […]

We’ve got an e-mail list of friends from college that has been going strong for some 13 years. We’ve gone through undergrad, graduate school, new jobs and relocations, marriages, and kids together. We’ve had our share of tragedy–we’re getting to the age where we’ve had a couple of parent deaths as well. And so it […]

What can I say? I spent much of last week listening to an Indigo Girl up close and personal, and “eavesdropping” as she and her dad talked with one another about the spirituality of music and the power of song to transform the world, and it was wonderful; but two and a half hours of […]

Three years ago I took an amazing class called “The Preacher and the Poet.” We read a lot of poetry, played around with sermons, and wrote silly impromptu creative writing assignments. This one’s been on my mind lately; we had to write a real or fictional story of a family member meeting someone famous.
PastorG is […]