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Baptist and Buddhist

When I worked as an on-call chaplain at a level 1 trauma hospital, I almost never slept through the night. Whether it was a call to keep a lonely patient company or a call to sit vigil with a family as they watched their loved one take her last breaths, there was always somewhere to be. To be honest, this was the kind of call I would hope for—a quiet, calm call where the emergency was not so much about being the anchor in a human drama but rather about gracefully meeting an inevitability of our human condition. Loneliness. The death of an elder. The inverted blessings of being alive.

February 6 Epiphany 5C Luke 5 1 11

A basketball hoop looms tall at the side of our driveway. It has seen many a game of horse played by my husband and sons. To win at horse—making as many shots as possible, thus avoiding spelling horse—requires not only skill but creativity. A player can compound the difficulty of a shot by calling “nothing but net,” which requires the ball to go through the hoop without touching the backboard or rim. When I read Jesus’ recruitment of the fishing disciples, my imagination is caught by nothing but net.