Sunday, December 30, 2018

Christmas 2018 – Reflections and Celebrations


"Madonna" by Elizabeth Catlett (1982).


Christmas Day has been and gone here in Minnesota . . . and although I missed spending this special time of year with my family and friends in Australia, I feel very fortunate to have many wonderful friends, and a special someone, here in the U.S. with whom I was able to celebrate all that the Winter Solstice/Christmas season signifies.

I share this evening a few images of some of the celebrations I've been part of. These images are accompanied by some of my favorite reflections on the meaning and significance of both the Winter Solstice and Christmas.

I also take this opportunity to wish all my readers a (belated) happy Solstice/Christmas and all the best for 2019.



Above: My boyfriend Brent and I on Christmas Eve, 2018.



Silent night, Solstice Night
All is calm, all is bright
Nature slumbers in forest and glen
Till the Springtime She wakens again
Sleeping spirits grow strong!
Sleeping spirits grow strong!

Silent Night, Solstice Night
Silver moon shine bright
Snowflakes blanket the slumbering earth
Yule fires welcome the Sun's rebirth
Hark, the Light is reborn!
Hark, the Light is reborn!

Silent Night, Solstice Night
Quiet rest till the Light
Turning every the rolling wheel
Brings the Winter to comfort and heal
Rest your spirit in peace!
Rest your spirit in peace!

– "A Pagan Silent Night"
by Ellen Reed



Above: The Prayer Tree – December 1, 2018.



Above: My friend Mahad and the Christmas decorations
at Eden Prairie Mall, Eden Prairie, MN.



My heart goes out to all who struggle to find hope and peace within their hearts this Christmas, in such uneasy times as these. Let us each resolve to be sources of light in the darkness and joy in the face of fear – and carry that same light and promise into the new year for a world in desperate need.

Mickey O'Neill McGrath, OSFS
via Facebook
December 23, 2018.




Now I am falling.
I want you to catch me.

. . . My broken heart,
my fabulous dance.
My fleeting song,
fleeting . . .






Solstice means "sun stands still," as if the warmth and radiance of life itself hangs in the balance at critical points in the course of planetary existence. When the world becomes darker, the inner light of the soul becomes more important. The light we discover in our own depths is a speck of the original star, a spark of life that connects us to each other and to the Soul of the World.




All throughout these months as the shadows have lengthened, this blessing has been gathering itself, making ready, preparing for this night.

It has practiced walking in the dark, traveling with its eyes closed, feeling its way by memory, by touch, by the pull of the moon even as it wanes.

So believe me when I tell you this blessing will reach you even if you have not light enough to read it; it will find you even though you cannot see it coming.

You will know the moment of its arriving by your release of the breath you have held so long; a loosening of the clenching in your hands, of the clutch around your heart; a thinning of the darkness that had drawn itself around you.

This blessing does not mean to take the night away but it knows its hidden roads, knows the resting spots along the path, knows what it means to travel in the company of a friend.

So when this blessing comes, take its hand. Get up. Set out on the road you cannot see.

This is the night when you can trust that any direction you go, you will be walking toward the dawn.





Above: Dinner with my friend Raul – December 1, 2018.



The eternal Christ Mystery began with the Big Bang where God decided to materialize as the universe. Henceforth, the material and the spiritual have always co-existed, just as Genesis 1:1-2 seems to be saying. Although this Christ existed long before Jesus, and is coterminous with creation itself, Christians seem to think Christ is Jesus' last name. What Jesus allows us to imagine – because we see it in him – is that the divine and the human are forever one. God did not just take on one human nature, although that is where we could first risk imagining it in the body of Jesus. God took on all human nature and said "yes" to it forever! In varying degrees and with infinite qualities, God took on everything physical, material, and natural as himself. That is the full meaning of the Incarnation. To allow such a momentous truth, to fully believe it, to enjoy it in practical ways, to suffer it with and for others – this is what it means to be a Christian! Nothing less will do now. Nothing less will save the world.

Richard Rohr, OFM
Daily Meditation
December 18, 2014.



Into this world, this demented inn,
in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all,
Christ has come uninvited.

But because He cannot be at home in it,
because he is out of place in it,
His place is with those others,
for whom there is no room,
His place is with those who do not belong,
who are rejected by power
because they are regarded as weak,
those who are discredited,
who are denied status of persons,
who are tortured, bombed and exterminated,
with those for whom there is no room,
Christ is present in the world.

He is mysteriously present in those
for whom there seems to be nothing
but the world at its worst.
. . . It is in these that He hides Himself,
for whom there is no room.





Above: A winter gathering with my friends (and former co-resident chaplains) Chandler, Hae, and Katie – December 9, 2018.




On the evening of Sunday, December 23, my good friends John and Noelle invited Brent and I to be part of their family's annual Christmas tree decorating ritual.


Above (from left): John, Brent, Gordie, Alicia, Noelle, Scott, and Phil.


Right: Darling Amelia decorating the tree.





The holidays are a time of spiritual preparation, if we allow them to be. We’re preparing for the birth of our possible selves, the event with which we have been psychologically pregnant all our lives. And the labor doesn’t happen in our fancy places; there is never “room in the inn,” or room in the intellect, for the birth of our authentic selves. That happens in the manger of our most humble places, with lots of angels, i.e. thoughts of God, all around.

Something happens in that quiet place, where we’re simply alone and listening to nothing but our hearts. It’s not loneliness, that aloneness. It’s rather the solitude of the soul, where we are grounded more deeply in our own internal depths. Then, having connected more deeply to God, we’re able to connect more deeply with each other. Our connection to the divine unlocks our connection to the universe.

According to the mystical tradition, Christ is born into the world through each of us. As we open our hearts, he is born into the world. As we choose to forgive, he is born into the world. As we rise to the occasion, he is born into the world. As we make our hearts true conduits for love, and our minds true conduits for higher thoughts, then absolutely a divine birth takes place. Who we’re capable of being emerges into the world, and weaknesses of the former self begin to fade. Thus are the spiritual mysteries of the universe, the constant process of dying to who we used to be as we actualize our divine potential.

. . . [T]his is the season when we consider the possibility that we could achieve a higher state of consciousness, not just sometimes but all the time. We consider that there has been one – and the mystical tradition says there have also been others – who so embodied his own divine spark that he is now as an elder brother to us, assigned the task of helping the rest of us do the same. [He] doesn’t have anything we don’t have; he simply doesn’t have anything else. He is in a state that is still potential in the rest of us. The image of Jesus has been so perverted, so twisted by institutions claiming to represent him. As it’s stated in [the book] The Course of Miracles, “Some bitter idols have been made of him who came only to be brother to the world.” But beyond the mythmaking, doctrine and dogma, he is a magnificent spiritual force. And one doesn’t have to be Christian to appreciate that fact, or to fall on our knees with praise and thanks at the realization of its meaning. Jesus gives to Christmas its spiritual intensity, hidden behind the ego’s lure into all the wild and cacophonous sounds of the season. Beyond the nativity scenes, beyond the doctrinal hoopla, lies one important thing: the hope that we might yet become, while still on this earth, who we truly are.

Then we, and the entire world, will know peace.

Marianne Williamson
Excerpted from "Christmas for Mystics"
The Huffington Post
December 14, 2012



On Christmas Eve my longtime friends Ken and Carol hosted a lunch for family and friends at their home in south Minneapolis. It was a lovely gathering.


Above: Brent, Paul, Carrie, Oscar, and Cass.


Right: With Carol, Ken, and Tom.



Above: With friends Sue Ann and Kathleen – December 24, 2018.


As a Quaker who believes that “there is that of God in everyone,” I know I’m called to share in the risk of incarnation. Amid the world’s dangers, I’m asked to embody my values and beliefs, my identity and integrity, to allow good words to take flesh in me. Constrained by fear, I often fall short – yet I still aspire to incarnate words of life, however imperfectly.

Christmas is a reminder that I’m invited to be born again and again in the shape of my God-given self, born in all the vulnerability of the Christmas story. It’s a story that’s hard to retrieve in a culture that commercializes this holy day nearly to death, and in churches more drawn to triumphalism and ecclesiastical bling than to the riskiness of the real thing. But the story’s simple meaning is clear to “beginner’s mind,” a mind I long to reclaim at age seventy-five.

An infant in a manger is as vulnerable as we get. What an infant needs is not theological debate but nurturing. The same is true of all the good words seeded in our souls that cry out to become embodied in this broken world. If these vulnerable but powerful parts of ourselves are to find the courage to take on flesh – to suffer yet survive and thrive, transforming our lives along with the life of the world – they need the shelter of unconditional love.

For those of us who celebrate Christmas, the best gift we can others — whatever their faith or philosophy may be – is a simple question asked with heartfelt intent: What good words wait to be born in us, and how can we love one another in ways that midwife their incarnation?

Parker Palmer
Excerpted from "The Risk of Incarnation"
On Being
December 24, 2014



Let us be at peace with our bodies and our minds.
Let us return to ourselves and become wholly ourselves.
Let us be aware of the source of being,
common to us all and to all living things.
Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion,
let us fill our hearts with our own compassion –
towards ourselves and towards all living beings.
Let us pray that we ourselves cease to be
the cause of suffering to each other.
With humility, with awareness of the existence of life,
and of the sufferings that are going on around us,
let us practice the establishment of peace
in our hearts and on earth.




Above and below: On Christmas Eve, my friends Joan and Matt hosted a dinner for family and friends at their home in Mendota Heights. It was a very fun and entertaining night!



Above: Joan and Matt – December 24, 2018.



Above: George, Omar, me, and Brent.



Above: Joan and Cree.



Above: Brent, Zach, Tykia, and George.



Above: Omar, George, and Ian – December 24, 2018.



At Christmas, time deepens. The Celtic imagination knew that time is eternity in disguise. They embraced the day as a sacred space. Christmas reminds us to glory in the simplicity and wonder of one day; it unveils the extraordinary that our hurried lives conceal and neglect.

We have been given such immense possibilities. We desperately need to make clearances in our entangled lives to let our souls breathe. We must take care of ourselves and especially of our suffering brothers and sisters.

John O'Donohue
Excerpted from the unpublished collection of John O'Donohue



The Christmas story is about learning how to be human, about kneeling before a newborn infant who is helpless, vulnerable, despised and poor. It is about inverting the world’s values. It is about understanding that the religious life – and this life can be lived with or without a religious creed – calls on us to protect and nurture the least among us, those demonized and rejected.

. . . The story of Christmas – like the story of the crucifixion, in which Jesus is abandoned by his disciples, attacked by the mob, condemned to death by the state, placed on death row and executed – is not written for the oppressors. It is written for the oppressed. And what is quaint and picturesque to those who live in privilege is visceral and empowering to those the world condemns.

Jesus was not a Roman citizen. He lived under Roman occupation. The Romans were white. Jesus was a person of color. And the Romans, who peddled their own version of white supremacy, nailed people of color to crosses almost as often as we finish them off with lethal injections, gun them down in the streets or lock them up in cages. The Romans killed Jesus as an insurrectionist, a revolutionary. They feared the radicalism of the Christian Gospel. And they were right to fear it. The Roman state saw Jesus the way the American state saw Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Then, like now, prophets were killed.

The radicalism of the Christian Gospel would be muted, distorted and denied by the institutional church once it came to power in the third century. It would be perverted by court theologians, church leaders and, in the 20th century, fascists. It would be mangled by the heretics in the Christian right to sanctify the worst aspects of American imperialism and capitalism. The Bible unequivocally condemns the powerful. It is not a self-help manual to become rich. It does not bless America or any other nation. It was written for the powerless, for those the theologian James Cone calls the crucified of the earth. It was written to give a voice to, and affirm the dignity of, those being crushed by malignant power and empire.

Chris Hedges
Excerpted from "What Christmas Means"
Truthdig
December 24, 2017




Above and below: Christmas Day was spent with Brent and his family in Burns Township, MN. The day's festivities were hosted by Brent's parents, Steve and Dawn.





Christmas is where Christianity begins, and, as Søren Kierkegaard observes, it is rife with the strange and unexpected. Optimally, then, it should serve Christians as a time to mine tradition and practice not for their most tired applications, but for those that are unexpected and those that lead us in our pursuit of the unexpected.

There is, after all, something revolutionary in Christianity – a tendency to upend, reverse, and radically transform. In Mary’s Magnificat, the song of praise she offers at her meeting with her cousin Elizabeth, she proclaims, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant [. . .] He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” This list of upsets issues from the mouth of a peasant girl who has been promoted to an almost unimaginable status. That the radical reversals of Christmas are enumerated to us by a young woman of no particular social standing is itself an incredible bit of turnabout.

The revolutionary character of Christianity is usually washed out and mostly confined to specific political moments when it’s useful to refer to it. But this selectivity, too, should be upended. Christianity is at all times concerned with the poorest, the most vulnerable, the most oppressed; it is permanently interested in reversing this order, in aiming at and accomplishing the unexpected. Christmas, the moment when time is invaded by eternity, is the moment when the reversal of all oppression becomes not possible but necessary. The unlikeliest upsets of order become, in the moment of Christmas, the beginning of Christianity itself, and remain essential to its character.

There is no Christianity, therefore, that is not revolutionary. It is possible to construe Christmas as another one of those soothingly cozy Christian celebrations, but it is more accurate to construe it as a call to revolution. From this moment on, nothing of the old order can be left intact: Christ has come to uplift the poor and bruised, and his example is Christianity’s command.

– Elizabeth Stoker-Bruenig
Excerpted from "An Unexpected Revolution"
Democratic Socialists of America
December 24, 2014



Above: A Christmas Night party with friends in northeast Minneapolis.



Left: With my friend John – December 25, 2018.





On Saturday, December 29 my friend Kathleen (right) made one of her wonderful soups and hosted a lunch for some friends and I at her home in the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis.



Pictured above from left: Rita, Kathleen, Tom, Brigid, and Darlene.





Christ's birth reminds us of the eternally new beginnings God offers to humanity. The grand irony is that we do not have to travel far to discover the Light that animated the Magi's quest. We have only to embrace our highest Selves, and realize humanity and divinity have never been separated. This is the cosmic truth heralded by Jesus of Nazareth's physical manifestation – we are all divine expressions of humanity; capable of being vessels full of grace, truth, love, joy, and peace.

May we allow the Incarnation to illumine our minds, and awaken to the reality of the marvelous presence of God in all things.

Phillip Clark
via Facebook
December 25, 2016



Christmas can help us readjust, help us see the Divine more transparently in life, in places where we would least expect. A barn, for example, a baby. The Incarnation we celebrate at Christmas is a call, our belief in it a commitment, to seek awareness of the Divine free of the impediments of culture, class or even catechism. That process calls for a degree of openness most of us rarely embrace or even know as possible. Yet I have a feeling the Divine is so imminent, so within the essence of things, that it is only a matter of learned blindness that keeps us from seeing. It is not something natural to us to be so dense. We can do better. We can break through.

– Angie O'Gorman
Excerpted from "The Divine is Greater Than Our Dogmas"
National Catholic Reporter
December 23, 2011



I will light candles this Christmas.
Candles of joy, despite all the sadness.
Candles of hope where despair keeps watch.
Candles of courage where fear is ever present.
Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days.
Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens.
Candles of love to inspire all of my living.
Candles that will burn all the year long.





See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Christmas in America, 2018
Christmas 2017 – Reflections and Celebrations
Christmas 2016 – Reflections and Celebrations
Christmas 2015 – Reflections and Celebrations
Christmas 2014 – Reflections and Celebrations
Celebrating the Coming of the Sun and the Son
Christmastide Approaches
No Room for Them
The Christmas Tree as Icon, Inviting Us to Contemplate the "One Holy Circle" of Both Dark and Light
Quote of the Day – December 1, 2014
Something to Cherish (2012)
A Christmas Message of Hope . . . from Uganda (2011)
Quote of the Day – December 26, 2010
Christmas in Australia (2010)
John Dear on Celebrating the Birth of the Nonviolent Jesus
A Bush Christmas (2009)
A Story of Searching and Discovery
The Christmas Truce of 1914
Clarity and Hope: A Christmas Reflection (2007)
An Australian Christmas (2006)
A Christmas Reflection by James Carroll

Images: Michael J. Bayly and friends.


Saturday, December 29, 2018

Quote of the Day

Encouraging” LGBTQ+ people by reminding them that Jesus hung out with sinners misses the point widely. Telling them that “we all have our sins but God loves us anyway” or that their “sin is no worse than ours” is the worst form of religious passive-aggressiveness. The fact is, their sexual orientation or gender identity does not need Jesus’ or, for that matter, anyone’s generosity. Like the rest of us, they no doubt have things in their lives that need grace and forgiveness – but being LGBTQ+ is not one of them.

Stan Mitchell
via Queer Grace
December 28, 2018


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Quote of the Day – March 7, 2018
Trusting God’s Generous Invitation
The Many Manifestations of God’s Loving Embrace
Remembering and Reclaiming a Wise, Spacious, and Holy Understanding of Homosexuality
Same-Sex Desires: “Immanent and Essential Traits Transcending Time and Culture”
Getting It Right
Gay People and the Spiritual Life
Beyond Respectful Tolerance to Celebratory Acceptance
Homosexuality Is Not Unnatural
Catholic Theologian: “Heterosexism, Not Homosexuality, Is the Problem”
Our Lives as LGBTQI People: “Garments Grown in Love”
No Altar More Sacred
The Longing for Love: God's Primal Beatitude
Never Say It Is Not God

Image: Alex Burns and Anthony Mackie in Robert Evans' 2004 film, Brother to Brother.


Friday, December 28, 2018

Out and About – Autumn 2018


Well, both the winter solstice and Christmas have been and gone. . . . And last night a winter storm rolled across Minnesota ensuring lots of shoveling and plowing of snow today.

It seems a good time, then, to take a look back over the recently ended (and decidedly more warmer and colorful) season of autumn.

But first, regular readers will be familiar with my "Out and About" series, one that I began in April 2007 as a way of documenting my life as an “out” gay man, seeking to be all “about” the Spirit-inspired work of embodying God’s justice and compassion in the world. I've continued the series in one form or another for the last 11 years – in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 . . . and now well into 2018.

So let's get started with this latest installment . . .

So, the big news of autumn was that I began in September working as the Palliative Care Chaplain at Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids, MN.

You may recall that in August I completed a year-long chaplain residency at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. My residency at Abbott was an incredible experience, to be sure, especially my work with the Palliative Care team there. Indeed, I came to be so connected with this team that I continued to work two days a week at Abbott, covering for the hospital's regular PC chaplain, until the end of November. My position at Mercy started as a part-time one but in January (that's next week!) I go full-time.


Above: With members of Abbott Northwestern Hospital's Palliative Care team – Tuesday, November 27, 2018. This was a farewell dinner the team arranged for me at the Anchor Fish and Chips restaurant in Minneapolis. I will miss all of these folks immensely. They are not only caring and competent professionals in the field of palliative care, but they've become for me trusted friends and colleagues.



Above: With my boyfriend Brent with whom I've been dating since October 2015. We're pictured at an art exhibit in Minneapolis on Saturday, November 10, 2018.



Above: My friend Mahad – Sunday, September 23, 2018.



My friends Joan and Matt hosted the sixth Queer Movie Night on Saturday, September 22, 2018. The film we watched and discussed was one I chose, the 2004 French drama Wild Side.

Pictured above are John, George, Matt, Joan, Omar, and Hae.

Directed by Sébastien Lifshitz, Wild Side is the story of the relationship between three individuals on the margins of society; a relationship that stretches the traditional bounds of love and friendship.

Stéphanie (Stéphanie Michelini) is a pre-operative transsexual who supports herself as a prostitute and shares a flat with two roommates – Mikhail (Edouard Nikitine), a Russian soldier who has fled the army and is hiding out in Paris, and Jamel (Yasmine Belmadi), a hustler from Algeria who services both men and women in the city's railway stations. When Stéphanie's mother (who is still in deep denial about her child's transition) falls gravely ill, Stéphanie travels to the small town where she was born to help care for her. Mikhail and Jamel soon join her.

About Wild Side, Time Out magazine notes the following:

Sébastien Lifshitz’s third feature opens with the soaring Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the Johnsons) singing ‘I Fell in Love with a Dead Boy’, with its quavering question, ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’, to a parlour of Parisian transsexuals. What follows is a meditative tone-poem on society’s marginals, drawing on the director’s collection of real migrants and misfits. . . . Discreetly shot by Agnès Godard, the film stitches the frayed threads of [Stéphanie, Mikhail, and Jamel's] lives into a non-linear tapestry that assesses their fractured and self-spun senses of family, nationality, sexuality and gender.



Above: With Brent and Cree – September 22, 2018.




My friend Kathleen hosted the seventh Queer Movie Night on Saturday, October 6, 2018. She chose the 2017 drama Disobedience to view and discuss.

Pictured above are Jim, Hae, Omar, and Kathleen.

Set in North London, Disobedience tells the story of a woman who returns to the strict Orthodox Jewish community for her father's funeral after living in New York for many years estranged from her father and ostracized by the community for a reason that becomes clearer as the story unfolds.

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 85% based on 136 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Disobedience explores a variety of thought-provoking themes, bolstered by gripping work from leads Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams, and Alessandro Nivola." David Ehrlich from IndieWire praised the importance of the film's subject, the outstanding acting and good direction, saying: "A fraught and emotionally nuanced love story about the tension between the life we’re born into and the one we want for ourselves.... Both Weisz and McAdams do a phenomenal job of negotiating who their characters are versus who their characters feel as though they have to be."

For more about our Queer Movie Night series, click here.



Above: With Brent and Omar.




Right: With my friend Jim – October 6, 2018.









Above and below: Autumn beauty in Minnesota. (For more images, click here and here.)





Above: With my friend Paula and her husband – September 29, 2018. The occasion was a party for Paula marking her retirement after many years of serving as the ICU chaplain at Abbott Northwestern Hospital.



Above and below: Pictures from a social gathering with colleagues from Abbott Northwestern Hospital – October 20, 2018.









Above: and below: My friend Mahad with Natasha, the most affectionate cat I know! – October 1, 2018






Above: Gathering to watch the season finale of Poldark with friends (from left) Jeffrey, Pete, Kathy, Brent, and John – Sunday, November 18, 2018.

We're at the home of John and Kathy, and for the occasion John made a fruit and rum nicky, also known as the Cumberland Rum Nicky. John learnt about this pie via The Great British Bake Off TV show.

The overall message of the fourth season of Poldark? Well according to one review it is that "Life is cruel, but love is the only way to live it."





Above and below: A portrait series I did of my friend Mahad – Minneapolis, November 27, 2018.









Above: Friends (from left) Deandre, Brent, Pete, and Jeffrey. This picture is from one of the number of 53rd birthday celebrations I had in late October. (To read my special birthday post, click here.)



Above, right, and below: On the evening of Monday, October 22, the night before my birthday, Brent and I saw British soul singer Lisa Stansfield in concert.

Lisa performed at the Pantages Theatre in downtown Minneapolis as part of her "Go Deeper" tour of North America, and our VIP tickets, a birthday gift from Brent, ensured that we got to meet her briefly before the show.





Above: A lovely picture of the Jacquet-Morrison family, all of whom are dear friends of mine. From left: Dee, Phil, John, Noelle, Scott, Alicia, Liana, and Amelia – November 24, 2018.



Above: Mahad and the (early) Christmas decorations at Eden Prairie Mall, Eden Prairie, MN – November 27, 2018. We went there to see the movie Beautiful Boy.



Above and below: Winter returns. (For more images, click here.)









Autumn 2018 Wild Reed posts of note:
Insightful Perspectives on the Kavanaugh/Ford Hearing
Something to Think About – October 10, 2018
In the Garden of Spirituality – Gerald May
The Prayer Tree . . . Aflame
Musings on the Possibility of “FinnPoe”
World Hospice and Palliative Care Day
With Love Inside
New Horizons: Reflections on David Lean’s Adaptation of E.M. Foster's A Passage to India
Our Bodies Are Part of the Cosmos
Samhain: A Time of Magick and Mystery
A Shared Language
On the Eve of the Midterms, Three Insightful Perspectives on the Voting Process in the U.S.
Acts of Love . . . Carl's and Mine
Jason Johnson on Stan Lee's Revolutionary Legacy
Maria by Callas: “Revelatory, Unprecedented, and Authoritative”
Autumn – Within and Beyond
A Prayer for Asylum Seekers Being Tear-Gassed at the Border
Autumnal (and Rather Pagan) Thoughts on the Making of “All Things New”
December's Snowy Start
Happy Birthday, Mum!
Guidelines for the Advent of a Universal Mysticism: An Introduction | Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
Ride to Sundown
An Inquisitive Little Visitor
The Carl Anderson Appreciation Group
“Wholeness Is Never Lost, It Is Only Forgotten”
Another First for Black Panther
Thoughts on the Disease of Addiction
Photo of the Day – December 19, 2018

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Out and About – Summer 2018
Out and About – Spring 2018 (Part I)
Out and About – Spring 2018 (Part II)
Out and About – Winter 2017-2018
Out and About – Autumn 2017

Images: Michael J. Bayly.