✧✧✧ Hugh’s dad died a few weeks ago. Hugh is a dear friend and Presbyterian minister in Waterloo (just west of Toronto), Ontario, Canada. I call, we small-talk for a while, and then I ask, “How is your heart?” “I appreciate you asking. My heart is heavy and sad.” ✧✧✧ I love Hugh.I mean, how […]

✧✧✧ My buddy Marc meets me near my house at 3:30 on Saturday afternoon so we can bike to the small park named for Elizabeth Caruthers. I looked her up as I started to write this article. Elizabeth Caruthers was an early pioneer woman whose Supreme Court case led to the 1850 Donation Act—ruling that

January 2026 — Portland, ORE Hiawatha Johnson, Jr., a mentor and friend died. Summer 1985 — Magic Camp Oakdale, Long Island I’m 15. He’s 30. He wears a dashiki. He uses a walking stick. I’m prepubescent. I listen to comedy cassettes on a Walkman. I’m in awe. ✧✧✧ I perform a rather banal magic act

2026 issue #03 — The Delay I’m in my buddy David’s car. He’s driving me from my mom’s apartment in NYC to Newark, NJ, where I’m going to catch a plane back home to Portland. David and I have been friends for fifty years. Amazing. My phone dings. I look at it. Nothing important. Just

Lifeboats. Summer. Bridges. Helpers. The rapid succession of a toddler-drunk-on-power messes is overwhelming. I’m exhausted by the sheer number of (what seem to me) reprehensible acts. My country is sickening me. federal agents shooting at (and killing) civilians actions against immigrants, federal workers, the environment, reproductive rights invading a sovereign nation and abducting its leader

Religiously. Every Friday night, religiously, I do a particular tradition. I do the same ritual religiously every Friday night. I’m not misusing the word religiously to mean fanatically, as in the improper use of it in the sentence: She exercises religiously. I use the word religiously as it should be used—with more positive connotations—as in

Thoughts on loving our enemies ✧✧✧ Three Saturday Services in a row the group and I interacted around the topic of loving our enemies. Here are some thoughts related to our discussion. ✧✧✧ The “Love your enemies” trope is famously attributed to Jesus — in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere. > Love your

Fall, 2025 I’m sitting in my favorite chair in the living room. The sky is getting darker. It’s almost dusk. I check the time: 4:40 p.m. The dark starts early these days. Especially in the Pacific Northwest. I make a mental note to take my vitamin D in the morning. ✧✧✧ Most weeks I get

Beloved reader, I am redoing the rotb.org website.  Again. Why am I redoing the website again? Because a website older than (blank) years is (blank minus one) years overdue for a facelift.  (The standard is three years for small sites and six years for large sites.)  ✧✧✧ While placing into the background a composite grid,

An apple, a banana, and a baseball cap.🍎🍌🧢 ✧✧✧  I arrive at the wedding venue super early. My preference, always, is to arrive early, find the couple, and let them see that I’m on site. (It usually calms them down.) But, today, I’m super, super early. The couple haven’t even arrived yet. “You the photographer?”