Loaves and Fishes

In many churches yesterday, congregants heard the story of feeding the thousands, supposedly, with “five barley loaves and two fish.”  Some years ago, as I listened to the account of this event in John’s Gospel, I thought to myself “I bet lots...

More Echoes

I recently blogged about how disorienting it can be to lose an architectural structure that has provided something to stop our eyes and send back a familiar message–an echo.  Now I want to speak to another kind of echo that enlivens me because it suggests a...

The Value of Echoes

If you’ve been in an echo chamber, you’ll surely recall the impulse to shout or speak quietly into that magic space and then wait for the reverberation to send back your words or sounds.  Echoes are not always sonic–they can be architectural.  During...

1808

I’m just home from a pilgrimage to Washington D.C. with a good friend.  We went to have the better part of two days at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and then part of a single day at the National Museum of the American Indian.  My...