tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79057417521493760272011-11-27T17:20:19.893-08:00A blog by Budd Friend-JonesBudd Friend-Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04918534195382060491noreply@blogger.comBlogger211100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905741752149376027.post-56033869469631956212011-09-08T12:33:00.000-07:002011-09-09T07:55:37.102-07:00

                                     There’s a feeling inside                                      That stirs our madness                                      To have chosen life                                      In the fields of sadness (Trail of Tears, Anonymous, Cherokee) The calamity of September 11 is still too big for our minds to encompass, and too deep for our hearts to fathom. It is

Budd Friend-Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04918534195382060491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905741752149376027.post-84494330236520242272011-08-03T21:07:00.000-07:002011-08-04T13:29:12.461-07:00

 I recently received a package in the mail. It contained a stark, gloomy painting of three men hanging on three gruesome crosses on a bleak and lifeless hill. I myself had painted it when I was a child; it was being returned to me by a friend who inherited it from her father, my childhood pastor. The man on the middle cross was the Christ I grew up with. Intellectually I may have understood that

Budd Friend-Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04918534195382060491noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905741752149376027.post-80111745722373830912011-04-22T11:46:00.000-07:002011-04-22T11:46:13.823-07:00

“And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.” - John 2b-5 I look at my disciples tonight

Budd Friend-Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04918534195382060491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905741752149376027.post-36217056380112559092010-09-16T05:37:00.000-07:002010-09-16T12:20:41.407-07:00

@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1;  Thank God for Charles Ives! Without him I couldn’t have gotten through seminary. To be more precise, without his The

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When the train doors opened, a veritable sea of excited sports fans flooded toward Cardiff Arms Park. Like small figurines in a swift current, we were swept with them through narrow lanes of vendors hawking fish and chips, beer and leek soup. Leek soup? Yes, the aroma of leek soup wafted over us in the damp March air, as pervasive and enticing as the smell of sizzling bratwursts at a Vikings

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Esther loved the sea. In her apartment were her father’s photographs of the sea. Rocks and clefts along the Atlantic coast, with names like Purgatory and Camel Rock, shaped her childhood consciousness. She once wrote: “How I pity those who have never had the opportunity to fall in love with the sea. Even at its most peaceful moments there is movement and rhythm and a tremendous tranquility

Budd Friend-Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04918534195382060491noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905741752149376027.post-7263800724440053382010-06-27T04:11:00.000-07:002010-06-27T05:28:18.350-07:00

Bonnie and Duke were with us that day. We arrived in Shepherdstown around 4:30 p.m. After stopping at the only stop-light in town, we drove past the college, the abandoned train station and the shanties huddled under hickory. We continued over a pocketed, dirt road until we could drive no further. With supplies in our arms, we walked the last half-mile through brush and bracken to a deserted

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Another gun, another bullet, another fifteen-year-old lay dead in the streets. His body was stretched out on the street where he had fallen. No one thought to cover it. No one knelt beside him. No one held his hand or head or offered a prayer. The loud staccato of police radios, the roaring engine of a passing car, the wailing siren of an approaching ambulance -- these noises masked the silence

Budd Friend-Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04918534195382060491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905741752149376027.post-81029120026643011092010-06-14T05:39:00.000-07:002010-06-16T06:58:07.087-07:00

"Start Seeing Motorcycles!" the bumper sticker screams from the car in front. No doubt an enthusiast for the open road, I think, or an anxious mom. These words assume (rightly) that most of us don’t see motorcycles. They imply (also rightly) that road running cyclists (and not the rest of us) are most at risk when drivers fail to see them. They remind us of the obvious: bikers are especially

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I was in a hurry. Bending forward to pick up a shoe, I banged my head on the corner of a shelf. A huge and bleeding bump -- my friend called it a “hematoma” -- immediately rose from my skull, bringing pain to me and horror to my children. No serious injury occurred, but the wound remained for days. I covered it with a band-aid, more to spare others its unsightliness than to protect my head. I

Budd Friend-Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04918534195382060491noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905741752149376027.post-12623756153586884142010-06-06T18:31:00.000-07:002010-06-08T09:13:44.811-07:00

I still remember the smells of sweat and sawdust. In my West Virginia hometown the whole community came out when traveling evangelists brought their road shows to town. We worshiped in churches, at the park, or in tents outside of town. We worshiped with singing and shouting, with laughter and tears. No one watched the clock when we got together. No one could imagine a better place to be. What

Budd Friend-Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04918534195382060491noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905741752149376027.post-86062567214128645422010-06-04T17:27:00.000-07:002010-06-04T19:28:21.595-07:00

In my mind, I am a convinced rationalist. I honor God with words. Although precise verbal formulations never “capture” reality, words and phrases can evoke and reveal what might otherwise remain obscure. Words are our hypotheses, thrown before us into the abyss of the unknown. They are our bridges, linking soul to soul. They reassure us with their compelling logic. They comfort us with their

Budd Friend-Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04918534195382060491noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905741752149376027.post-69649248075036079062010-05-29T08:50:00.000-07:002010-05-29T08:53:05.882-07:00

She has a knack for creating lovely arrangements with flowers and greens from her yard and the woods near her home. When she brings her work to grace our Sunday worship, we are reminded that all of nature joins with us in our joyful praise of God. On one such Sunday, as she approached our meeting place, her daughter ran from behind and thrust a handful of dandelions into the middle of her

Budd Friend-Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04918534195382060491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905741752149376027.post-213389749865757332010-05-25T20:39:00.001-07:002010-05-25T21:11:04.209-07:00

Jim and I were fellow seminarians. Neither of us is very tall, and I always admired the way he conducted himself. He was something of a prince -- urbane, articulate, even a bit haughty. His  beard was precisely trimmed; his clothing was exquisitely appropriate to every occasion. I never saw Jim in a situation in which he was not in complete control. Once he was asked to conduct worship for

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My parents were right about fire. They cautioned me not to play with it. Not to play with matches, or kerosene, or the gas burners in the kitchen. My mother was a nurse. She had seen what fire can do. My father was a fireman. He had watched lives and properties destroyed by fire. On the other hand, we cooked our food and heated our home with fire. We shoveled coal into the roaring giant of a

Budd Friend-Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04918534195382060491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905741752149376027.post-40579215124229014842010-05-20T05:29:00.000-07:002010-05-20T20:34:30.127-07:00

If you have ever visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art, you may have seen a great and colorful mobile by Alexander Calder, one of America’s foremost modem sculptors. Calder’s mobiles are huge, welded, metallic surfaces, delicately balanced and suspended so as to move constantly with the slightest currents of air. Calder himself was one of the great and colorful characters in American life. He

Budd Friend-Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04918534195382060491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905741752149376027.post-19653166723984796242010-05-15T21:18:00.000-07:002010-05-16T04:33:50.421-07:00

“I call heaven and earth to witness this day: I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life -- if you and your offspring would live -- by loving the Lord your God, by heeding God’s commands, and by holding fast to God..." from an ancient ony ceremof covenant renewal,recorded in Deuteronomy 30: 19-20a “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Jesus, as recorded

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Arlo Gutherie, Woody’s son, once wrote a little song about the “last guy.”  While all of us have troubles, he said, we take comfort by knowing that some people are “a lot worse off” than we are. As a child, when I complained about anything, my father reminded me how much worse life was for the little kids in Italy.  Substitute Iraq or Afghanistan and the argument still holds.  Even today, when

Budd Friend-Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04918534195382060491noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905741752149376027.post-32296828719927967672010-05-06T11:41:00.000-07:002010-06-20T15:18:40.965-07:00

A Minnesota humorist once created a motto for the Future Historians of America: "Planning Today for the Yesterday of Tomorrow." I thought of that as I visited my father. He was living in a nursing home in Clearfield, Utah, about as far from our West Virginia hometown as he could imagine. He inhabited a tomorrow he never dreamed of yesterday. My Dad had been a Methodist lay preacher. After I moved

Budd Friend-Joneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04918534195382060491noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905741752149376027.post-8984435823823431282010-04-27T20:22:00.000-07:002010-05-03T15:33:46.955-07:00

In recent months I have found myself wanting to substitute the word “homily” for “sermon” in our Sunday orders of worship. “This is curious,” I said to myself. “What is this about?”  At first I suspected my desire to appear more southern than I have a right to claim to be. Homily. Hominy. Homily. Hominy. Homily. Hominy. This word association evokes all things truly southern. The very sound of it

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I listened intently. An Orthodox nun was responding to a question about which I care deeply: how to nurture spirituality in children. As parent and pastor, I often ponder this question but Mother Rafaela’s answer took me by surprise. “The question really is,” she said, “how to put beauty into a child’s life.” Both beauty and ugliness have the power to shape and transform our lives and our

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