the unlikely orange

happy holidays everything is new. new underwear. new gadgets and toys. newly added pounds to the midsection. new year. but before i fold up the last one and tuck it away in some old moving box in the attic, i wanted to share our Christmas with you. it was a wonderful Christmas, mostly because of our son, Jack, who experienced it with all the wonder of a toddler, too young to really understanding much of the meaning of the celebration, but old enough to clearly understand that it was a celebration. and it was a warm Christmas. the picture of the holly above is right outside our house just a few days before Christmas. it was warm and octoberish. christmas, this year, was warm and manger-ish. these are pictures of jack in the days leading up to Christmas. i don't know if every parent is as taken with their own child as i am, but, i just can't handle his cuteness. the hand in the pocket thing is his own doing. he is not receiving modeling directions here from shannon and i. so we h...

i'll be out of pocket until the new year, so have a blessed end of the 2006 edition of time's unfolding, and i will step with you into whatever comes next. see you next year! greg.

merry christmas i found this photo on a found photography site. found photography, obviously, deals with the pictures that are found in the garbage, at flea markets, along the side of the road, etc. i love found photos because there are stories in them, but only you can tell the story! and speaking of telling the story, it is Christmas, a time when we tell and re-tell a story that has been told for many years now. its a story of hope. its a story about the beginning and ending of everything. its really a story about a baby, but everything else hinges on this story, so its no insignificant story, this one. its everything. its fragile. its unbelievable angels in the sky, singing songs i'm not sure we can understand. its the smell of animal dung. its the aching of the centuries, the hope of everything broken. its the shame of sin, and the fear of being dismissed quietly. its the audicity of hope, that you indeed won't be let go of quietly, that you are accepted, loved even, and ...

Welcome to the 2006 Holiday Edition of Getting to Know Your Friends! 1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? i've never had egg nog, but, as some of you know, i have issues with the names of food (meatloaf, anyone?) and i think i might have some trouble drinking something called "nog" unless i was a prisoner of war and hadn't had anything to drink for several excruciating days, and it was a question of survival. even then, i might just pretend to drink it, keeping it hidden in my cheeks so i could then spit it in the face of one of the people guarding me. so, i'll say hot chocolate. but i prefer coffee. not seasonal enough? add some peppermint syrup, or, better yet, schnapps. 2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Santa definitely wraps the gifts. 3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? white all around. i would like to go back to the old school giant multi-colored glass bulbs. those were the best. 4. Do you hang mistletoe? interestingly, someone just...

hung i've hung it on some tree or other twenty-something times. i remember. its rite and ritual. that's right, its more than glass or brass or hallmark sentimentality. its more than the sum of its weight, more than the way it hangs on the tree. its more than it appears to be, this ornament. "each year at this time we come close to Christmas," the preacher said every december. and each december, as Christmas looms, hangs on the horizon, i open up that blood red box, excitedly, like santa left it for me. and i pull out all those memories marked with years like time capsules, encapsulating Christmases past. and i hang them like hopes, on that stark tree. i feel like a child, again, and birth (life) suddenly feels a whole lot closer, a whole lot more possible. greg.

their songs are poems if there was music that i could eat, that i could inhale, that i could ingest into my very being, chewing on it and swallowing it deep into me, this would be it: over the rhine. i know, i know, i can get carried away with praise (see the post on derek jeter), but i am not fooling around here. there are many musicians out there, most of them NOT on your FM dials, who are artists. and among that group, their are a few who are absolutely exceptional at doing what they do. over the rhine fit into that category. linford and karin aren't going to hook you with tricks and gimmicks, but will woo you with words and music put together in ways that are so simple and so profound and so magical and so...perfect. shannon and i got to go see them at the theater of living arts on south street in philadelphia on friday night (sorry its been so long since i've posted--advent is kind of a busy time for those of us who work in the Church). we didn't clap to the beat or ...

browns are black and blue! my dad and sister mary got to go the steelers game in heinz field last night, to see the steelers demolish the browns 27-7. i wish i could have been there, but here are a couple of pictures that my dad took.