Recovery Sunday Lost Sheep 19C St. Mark's Episcopal Church, September 14, 2025

19C Welcoming Sinners and Lost Sheep, Luke 15:1-10 Recovery Sunday Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, September 14, 2025

“This fellow welcomes sinners and looks for lost sheep.”

Today is Recovery Sunday at St. Mark’s. Why does our church dedicate a Sunday to Recovery from the disease of addiction, which affects 10-17% of the people in this room?

The first reason is that the CDC reports that the excessive use of alcohol is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States,/ and the toll keeps rising each year. One in five households experiences alcoholism.1 /Also, the United States has the highest rate of drug overdose in the world. A significant decline has occurred with widespread availability of naloxone, which Saint Mark’s has been distributing,/ but drug overdose is still the leading cause of death in Americans 18 to 44.2/

The Episcopal Church was involved in 12-Step Recovery from its inception./ Listen to these stories.

1934 Calvary Episcopal  Church, New York City

The Rev. Dr. Sam Shoemaker, rector of Calvary for the last 10 years, develops Calvary House, a hostel and center for ministry and small groups. He also runs Calvary Rescue Mission, where Bill Wilson,/ an alcoholic,/ New York stockbroker, visits during his last days of drinking. Bill is influenced by Ebby Thacher, a friend who is sober through a spiritual program called the Oxford Group led by Sam Shoemaker at Calvary House.

1935 Bill Wilson becomes sober and spends more time talking with Sam Shoemaker in his book-lined office and attending Oxford Group meetings,/ as well as visiting Calvary Mission and Calvary House.

 What does Bill Wilson say about  the Rev. Sam Shoemaker: “Every river has a wellspring at its source. AA is like that. In the beginning, there was a spring which poured out of a clergyman, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker. He channeled to the few of us/ the loving concern, the Grace, to walk in the Consciousness of God—to live and to love again, as never before. 3 Dr. Sam Shoemaker was one of AA’s indispensables. Had it not been for his ministry to us in our early days, our Fellowship would not exist today. Sam Shoemaker passed on the spiritual keys by which we were liberated. He was a co-founder of AA.”  “The first three Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous were inspired in part by Shoemaker. (We are powerless over alcohol, there is a power greater than ourselves that can restore us,/ by turning our life and our will over to the care of God)  “The early AA got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgement of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Groups and directly from Sam Shoemaker, the former leader of the Oxford Group in America,/ and from no one else.”3,4,5,

These are direct quotes from Bill Wilson.

Now, let’s hear from Dr. Shoemaker.

“I believe the church has a great deal to learn, not from any individual member of AA, but from the incredible collective experience of AA. I pray to God that what is happening pretty steadily and consistently throughout the fellowship could happen in every church. The AA fellowship is made up of people who are beginning to be changed, not saints, and not perfect. We in the church can all learn by this example, and if we think we’re above it, we are in real danger.”6,7///////

So, Next, let’s hear the story of one of my medical friends in recovery. She gave me permission to share her story. /She had her first drink as a junior in college on weekends at her aunt’s home at the cocktail hour. She finishes medical school and residency and perhaps has one drink a day, for relaxation. Then, with her first job, working 10 to 12-hour days, she develops a pattern where alcohol becomes a central part of her life. She returns home from the hospital after long hours, has two glasses of wine before dinner, two during dinner, and two after dinner. Then she goes to sleep to awaken the next day to the same routine. She achieves notable success in her profession, but the people she is not there for are her husband and children. When they ask questions about homework at night, she simply smiles. She is a quiet alcoholic. She knows if she speaks, people will know she has had too much to drink, so she becomes quieter and quieter. People begin to see her as a very spiritual person./ The lesson here is, if you want people to think you are spiritual, just don’t say much. She is filled with the spirit, but a very different spirit. She serves on vestries, keeping her mask of quietness, the perfect vestry member. She is cautious not to let her drinking interfere with her work. She never drinks when she is on call.

She starts seeing  a therapist for “difficulties accepting life on life’s terms.” The therapist wonders if she might benefit from a 12-step group. No, AA is not for her. That is for people who live under the bridge and older men who smoke a lot. One work night, she breaks her work rule and drinks excessively. The next morning at the hospital is one of those days when she must be on her toes every second. She prays that if God keeps her from hurting anyone that day, she will never drink again. The next night, she is at her favorite restaurant, drinking champagne at a party honoring one of her partners. She is to give a speech, but instead, she just sits there, smiling at everyone. She knows if she speaks, everyone will know she has been drinking too much./

This night becomes a moment of clarity. She knows she is crossing the line from being a functional alcoholic. She knows she is powerless over alcohol and that her life is becoming unmanageable. Soon, her drinking will interfere with her work. Many alcoholic stories are similar. Work seems to be one of the last aspects of life to be compromised. Her therapist connects her to a member of AA. This woman graduated from high school. Our friend has many degrees, but this woman knows more about living. This sponsor keeps her sober, taking her to meetings every day./ Our friend soon learns that the answer to sobriety is a spiritual life, taking the second and third steps of AA, knowing that a power greater than herself can restore her to sanity and turning her life and her will over to God. When she hears this, she thinks it is hopeless. She is a spiritual person; everyone is aware of that. She is very involved in her church./ But what she learns in AA is something she heard in church, but forgot. 

You have seen these bumper stickers: “God is my copilot.” That is true for her, but she is the pilot. Her relationship with God is that God is there to help her own flight plan take off the ground. She has not turned her life over to God for God’s purposes. She learns to live by the Serenity Prayer, speaking her truth, praying for the knowledge to discern which situations she can change, and accepting what she cannot change. She goes to AA meetings almost every day for 10 years, learning that staying sober is staying in community with a group of people/ trying to live their lives as honestly as possible with God at the center. Living the 12 steps involves taking an inventory daily, making amends to those she has harmed, and removing the mask of being the perfect person. She makes amends with her family, whom she harms the most. Two of her children are in college; one is in high school. She has not been there for them at crucial times. Is it hopeless? She talks about making amends to one of her sons at a local (Trios) Restaurant. She tells him she wants to change. His response is branded on her heart: “Mom, it is never too late to change.” Soon, all of her children leave home. Then,/ all return. Friends tell her how terrible this is. But she loves it. God gives her another chance to relate to her children and be a mom. She has now been sober for 34 years, 9 months, and 26 days. She still attends a 12-step meeting once a week. She has six grandchildren who are the light of her life. We often talk about what her life would be like without a 12-step group. She most probably would be dead. She would have missed the unbelievable joy of being a grandmother,/ an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church,/ and being here with you today/ to share MY story of how a power greater than myself/ that welcomes sinners and looks for lost sheep/ works in community,/ to save my life. Amen

 Joanna Seibert

1Facts About U.S. Deaths from Excessive Alcohol Use, CDC, HHS.GOV, August 6, 2024.

2CDC Reports Nearly 24% Decline in Drug Overdose Deaths, CDC, HHS.GOV, February 25, 2025.

3Dick B, “Calvary House and the Oxford Group,” The Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous, A Design for Living that Works, p. 114.

4“A Biography of Sam Shoemaker,” AlcoholicAnonymous.org.

5“AA Tributes, Samuel Shoemaker, ‘Co-founder’ of AA,” Dickb.com

6 Karen Plavan, “A Talk on Samuel Moor Shoemaker,” Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh, January 31, 2010

7 Michael Fitzpatrick, “Rev Sam Shoemaker, His Role in Early AA Part 11,” Recoveryspeakers.com

11C Mary and Martha, Joshua Bell Story, Distracted By Many Things, July 20, 2025, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Joanna Seibert

 11C Joshua Bell, Distracted by Many Things

July 20, 2025 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock Joanna Seibert

“As Jesus and his disciples went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.”//////

He emerges from the Metro/ at the L’Enfant Plaza Station at 7:51 a.m. and positions himself against a wall beside a trash basket in the arcade at the top of the escalators. He is a white male looking younger than his 39 years, wearing jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a Washington Nation/als baseball cap. He takes out his 3.5 million-dollar Stradivarius violin made in 1713, opens his case at his feet,/ shrewdly tosses in a few dollars as seed money, and starts to play. It is Friday, January 12, 2007, during the Washington DC morning rush hour. For the next 43 minutes, one of the world’s leading violinists, Joshua Bell, performs six classical pieces as 1,097 people pass by L’Enfant Plaza at the nucleus of federal Washington./  Almost all are on their way to government jobs, mid-level bureaucratic positions, policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, and consultant.

Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post devises this experiment to see if, at an inconvenient time, will people stop to hear the voice of the world’s most celebrated violinist. The acoustics are perfect. The arcade is a buffer between the Metro escalator and the outdoors. The sound bounces round and round and resonates.

If you were in Little Rock in March of that year, you paid several hundred dollars to hear Bell play. Or you may have seen the movie The Red Violin, where Bell performs the violin solos in the Oscar-winning soundtrack. He also won the Avery Fisher Prize as the best classical musician in America, and in 2001, won the Grammy Award for the best instrumental soloist. He is usually paid $1,000 a minute.

Bell begins with Bach’s “Chaconne,” one of the most difficult violin pieces, celebrating the breadth of human possibility./ Three minutes go by./ Sixty-three people pass by without acknowledging Bell. Finally, a middle-aged man alters his gait for a split second,/ turns his head to notice,/ but then keeps walking./ “But Martha was distracted by her many tasks.”

A half minute later, Bell gets his first donation. A woman throws a dollar in the case but keeps walking. It is not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stops, stands against a wall, and listens. In the forty-three minutes that Bell plays, seven people stop at least for a minute. Twenty-seven give money, most on the run. As people later review Bell’s performance from a hidden camera, those rushing by Bell appear like ghosts. Only Bell seems real./ “But Martha was distracted by her many tasks.”

John Mortensen is on the final leg of his daily bus-to-Metro commute from Reston. He heads up the escalator. It’s a long, slow one-minute, 15-second ride,/ so he gets a good earful of music before his first look at the musician.

Mortensen is the first person to stop, the man at the six-minute mark. He is a project manager at the Department of Energy. He knows nothing about classical music but hears something he later says that makes him “feel at peace.”/ He looks at his watch and realizes he is three minutes early for his budget meeting. He stays his allotted three minutes as 94 more people pass briskly by. He promptly leaves and gives money to a street musician for the first time in his life./ “She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.”/

There are six moments in the video that Bell feels painful to re/live: the awkward times after the end of each piece: nothing. /The music stops./ The same people who don’t

notice him playing do not realize he has stopped./ No applause,/ no acknowledgment. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.”/

After “Chaconne” is Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” a musical prayer among history’s most familiar religious pieces. After a few minutes, something happens. A mother and her 3-year-old preschooler, Evan, emerge from the escalator. You can see Evan clearly in the video. He keeps twisting around to look at Joshua Bell as his mother briskly propels him toward the door. His mother, an IT director for a federal agency, later says she is in a time crunch: “I had an 8:30 training class, and first I had to rush Evan off to his teacher, then rush back to work, then to the training facility in the basement.” She moves her body between Evan’s and Bell’s, cutting off her son’s line of sight. Evan is still craning to look, as they exit the arcade.

In fact, every single child, who walks by tries to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent pulls the child away.”/ “There is need of only one thing./Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

The best seats in the house are a few feet away from Bell in the arcade at the busy kiosk selling lottery tickets for the Daily 6. No one in the line, often five or six people long during the entire 43 minutes, ever looks up at Bell./

Bell ends “Ava Maria” and four other pieces to another thunderous silence. Bell comments that he feels invisible, even though he is making a lot of noise! He notices people speaking louder on their cell phones as they pass by to overcome his “noise.”/

Then there is Calvin Myint. He works for the General Services Administration. He gets to the top of the escalator, turns, and heads straight for the door. When asked later about the musician four feet away from him at the Metro, he has no reco/llec/tion. There is nothing wrong with his hearing. Myint is listening to his iPod. With iPods, we hear what we already know and program as our playlists. We are not open to something new coming into our ears. Myint is listening to “Just Like Heaven” by the British rock band The Cure. The song is about failing to see the beauty of what’s plainly in front of our eyes./

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.”

In preparing for the event, editors at the Post Magazine discussed how to deal with crowd control when people realized it was Joshua Bell. Only one latecomer recognizes Bell. Stacy Furukawa, who admits not knowing much about classical music, had been at Bell’s free concert at the Library of Congress three weeks earlier. She positions herself 10 feet away from Bell, front row, /center. She has a massive grin on her face until he stops playing, introduces herself to Bell, and tosses in a twenty. Not counting that (it was tainted by recognition), Bell makes $32.17 for 43 minutes of playing. Yes, some people gave pennies./

“Actually, Bell said with a laugh, “that’s not bad. About $40 an hour. I can make an OK living on that and don’t have to pay an agent.” //

“Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

The cultural hero of the day arrives late at L’Enfant Plaza in the figure of John Pic/a/rello, a small man with a bald head. Picarello hits the top of the escalator just as Bell begins his final piece, a repr(e)ise of “Chaconne.” He stops dead in his tracks,/ stands across from the lottery line,/ and does not move for nine minutes. Like all the passers/by interviewed about any unusual happening that morning on the way to work, Picarello is the only one who immediately mentions the violinist. His response is, “I have never heard anyone of that caliber. I did not go close but walked far away so I would not intrude in his space.” Picarello had studied the violin but gave it up when he realized he could never make a living from it. He is now a supervisor at the US Postal Service. As he leaves, Picarello says, “I humbly threw in $5.” He barely looks at Bell and tosses in the money. Embarrassed, he quickly walks away from the man he once wanted to be. Asked later about having regret about not pursuing music, the postal supervisor says, “No. If you love something but choose not to do it professionally,/ it’s not a waste. Because you still have it. You have it forever.”/

“There is need of only one thing./ Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”/

Gene Weingarten, “Pearls Before Breakfast,” Washington Post, April 8, 2007. 

Joshua Bell is currently the musical director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.

Celebration of the Life of Dr. Stephen Kahler, July 9, 2025, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church

Funeral Dr. Stephen Kahler Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church July 9, 2025

 Are you seeking someone with exceptional credentials?

Princeton, Duke, UNC, Johns Hopkins, Melbourne! That is Dr. Kahler.

Have you been looking for a physician who has made significant advancements in pediatric care, especially in Arkansas?

 A clinical geneticist on the forefront of newborn screening, calling for early detection of more than 30 life-threatening disorders. Early diagnosis is life-saving for children and gives hope to the families of the affected infants, who usually do not show symptoms until much too late.

A physician committed to research in Autism! // All this is Dr. Kahler

Or have you been looking for a Renaissance man?

A classical pianist, a musician who knows all the Gilbert and Sullivan operas by heart.

A  bird lover.

Someone with a remarkable grasp of math, world geographyand history, classical literature, fluent in seven languages, a lover of opera,/ and a cradle Episcopalian to boot! By now, you should know who this is.

But, these are facts for a resume or obituary, but here are some more personal observations, known only to the people who directly interacted with Steve Kahler./

Karen Frast, the CMO of Children’s Hospital, describes Steve as “A pediatrician who clearly loved what he did/ and had the ability to intertwine the depth of his intelligence with a warm personality/ that put patients and parents at ease.”

We desperately need more Dr. Kahlers.

Kim reminds us that Steve was a physician with the remarkable ability to work with difficult colleagues that no one else could work with. He had the gift to see the best in others./

How does someone do that?

Christians would say that Steve looked for and saw Christ, the God of Love, in others, even when that light of Christ was a small spark.

My experience is that we can more clearly see that light in others when the love and light of Christ dwell within us. I hope you will see, hear, and feel the light of Christ that still shines through Steve in the hymns Kim picked as his favorites. What about our opening hymn, “I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light, In Christ there is no darkness at all. The night and the day are both alike, Shine in my Heart, Lord Jesus?” Of course, Steve selected the communion hymn we will soon sing because Arthur Sullivan wrote it. While you may feel like you are in a chorus of a Gilbert and Sullivan Opera, listen also to the words of this Easter hymn. The music Steve so loved is telling us more about/ his presence today/ in the resurrection, as does the final hymn, “Now Thank We All Our God,” one of his all-time favorites. Listen carefully to all the music in this service. Stay for the postlude, a gift from Steve, as he shares with us how music carries the embodiment of the light of Christ, while Steve, even more brightly, is “shining” now in the resurrected life.//

I only remember one thing from our confirmation. The priest, Cham Canon, told us that when we sing hymns, we would be saying some of the most profound words we would ever speak. Steve’s gift of music calls us to re-member this and carry home with us the light of Christ that is alive and embodied in the music and the words we hear today. //

But, of course, we do miss Steve’s physical presence. What about the love of Christ, the friendship, the love Steve brought to us? The reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans serves as a reminder of where that love lives. Steve is living in the resurrection, yet remains deeply connected to us through the love he shared with each of us in this world./ Nothing, no nothing will separate us from the love of Christ within him that Steve shared with us. His love is still here/ and also in all eternity. Love never dies. Know this in your heart and mind/ as we listen and sing the music Steve left for us today. Let the music and the words be his homily. /

Alas, Steve does leave us one more gift that may explain the profound presence of the light of Christ within him. This is his nourishment from the holy communion, the Eucharist that we also will soon share. We will hear the words of remembrance of Christ’s presence in this world, Christ’s death, his gift of resurrection, and a reminder of the invitation for us to be united, to be connected to Christ’s love that Christ and the Holy Spirit have given us. Steve received the Eucharist weekly and continued to do so until the day before he died. It was his sus/tenance. It was a reminder of Christ’s love in him, in us, in the world, and in the eternal life where Steve now dwells. The people who took communion to Steve each week will testify to how meaningful sharing communion from this altar was to Steve,/ but perhaps even more to those who carried the consecrated bread and wine from this place to his presence. Remember this/ as you come to this same altar today, that so often served the presence of Christ in the bread and the wine to Steve Kahler.//

The final words in this service are, “Let us go forth in the name of Christ.”  We might respond to these words/ as a way to honor Steve‘s life. A reminder of what we are to do with the love of Christ, we learned from him./ Like Steve,/go out from this place as he did/ and look for the love of Christ in each person/ you meet/ today/ and throughout all eternity.

Amen

Joanna Seibert. joannaseibert.com

12-Step Eucharist, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, July 2, 2025, Independence Day

July 2, 2025, 12-step Eucharist, praying for Enemies.

Matthew 5:43-48 Independence Day, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

We have spent this day in prayer for ourselves, our neighbors, our city, our state, our country, and our world. We have prayed for peace. We also prayed for our enemies, as directed by tonight’s reading from Matthew’s gospel on Independence Day. Praying for others who have harmed us/ or we have harmed is also a significant part of 12-step recovery. As long as we have people we perceive as enemies, we are carrying resentments about people who have harmed us/ or whom we believe are our enemies. We become obsessed with these people and how they have/ or could hurt us. They become our higher power as we spend so much time thinking about how to get even/ or expose them. Therefore, we must forgive them for the sake of our own inner peace of mind. A significant part of forgiveness is praying for those who hurt us or hurt those we love. We must pray until God has changed us. It is not a quick fix. It is painful.

In our forum, we recently studied one of C. S. Lewis’ books in the Narnia series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a favorite among children of all ages. In this story, Eustace is such a difficult young boy that he turns into a dragon. That is what having resentments, sins, defects of character, and enemies can do to us. Eustace the dragon comes to realize who he really is and wants to become a boy again. He tries to take off his dragon skin. He takes it off, but it comes right back on again. Aslan, the Christ figure, says, “Let me undress you.” Aslan does, and it is painful. Eustace again becomes a boy, a much nicer boy,/ most of the time. On our own, it is difficult to rid ourselves of resentments, our defects of character, our sins, and our desire to return evil for evil. We acknowledge our sins,/ then ask God to help us/ ask for forgiveness for those we have harmed/ and for us/ to forgive those who have harmed us.

Take another look at the 12 steps in our service. Look at Steps 6 and 7. Just before thee two steps. we acknowledge our mistakes 4, admit them to someone we trust 5, and then 6, we are ready for God to remove them. We then 7 humbly ask God to remove the defects of character and shortcomings in our lives. It is a process, being ready, and then asking, in which God is deeply involved. We acknowledge our mistakes and then put ourselves in a position for God to change us.// We cannot do it on our own, just as we could not become clean or sober on our own./////

Today, celebrating Independence Day, we give thanks for a British writer who wants us to know the loving God who made us, putting God’s message in a language that children can understand, so we can as well.

Joanna Seibert

12-Step Eucharist Easter 7C John 17:20-26 Being One Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock , AR

Easter 7C John 17:20-26. Being One 12-Step Eucharist

 Saint Mark’s,  June 4, 2025 

The gospel for this last Sunday of Easter between Ascension and Pentecost is always from Jesus’ high priestly prayer the night before he dies. Jesus prays for his disciples and us: “Father, the world does not know you, but I know you.”

Every evening, we channel surf CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and PBS, viewing the world’s news. We peek out from our comfortable chairs to that larger world where the Father sends Jesus and us.

Every evening, details are different, but significant themes recur./ Stocks plunge. Stocks rise. Gunman Opens Fire. Wars./ Wildfires. Floods. Hungry. Homelessness.

A search for peace.

“As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.. that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have loved them.” ///

We change channels to the headline news story in our private world, where often our anchor newscaster is the Christ within us. 

The best time to hear this private news channel is at night after the lights are out. We lie in the dark, waiting for sleep as we listen to the sound of silence whispering inside of us. It is a time to reflect on our own search for peace and connection, which is our own nightly, high priestly prayer.

We are churchgoers, lovely people. We fight battles well camouflaged. We are snipers rather than bombardiers. Our weapons are more likely chilly silences than hot words. But our wars and disasters are no less real, and the stakes no less high.

We recently celebrated Memorial Day, a day when we remember Americans who have died in wars. Memorial Day began three years after the end of the Civil War in 1868. Ken Burns’s PBS series on the Civil War describes a remarkable scene on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1913 when the remnants of the two armies reenact Pickett’s charge. The old Union veterans on the ridge take their places among the rocks. The old Confederate veterans start marching toward them across the field below./ Then something extraordinary happens./ As the older men among the rocks rush down at the older men coming across the field,/ a great cry goes up,/ only instead of doing battle as they had a century earlier,/ this time they throw their arms around each other, embrace, and openly weep./“They become one.”//

As we lie in the dark digesting the daily news of our world, if only we could see what those older men saw as they fell into each other’s arms at Gettysburg. If only we could see the people in the world we are at war with through the lens of the Christ within us and the Christ light within them..////

When we stay together in a Christian community, such as St. Mark’s, even when we disagree, like the veterans of the Civil War, the Father and the Son within us will continue to speak to us, even if we fail to talk to each other. The Father and the Son will not allow us to stay disconnected from someone we meet weekly, pray with, and kneel with before this altar.//

We lie in our beds in the dark. It is still difficult to see ourselves hungry or homeless in our personal newscast.

For you and me, to be at home is staying connected to the Christ within ourselves and our neighbor./That is truly being at peace./ / We do this by living our lives so intricately interwoven with the Christ within our community, within recovery groups, the Christ within this congregation, the Christ within our families, the Christ within our mothers and fathers, the Christ within the homeless in our city, the Christ within our neighbors on Mississippi, the Christ within the people of Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, Russia, Syria, Afghanistan, Texas, Florida./ We realize there can be no real peace for any of us until there is real peace for all of us. As we all begin to become one, we experience in ourselves the love between the Father and the Son./ This is the love offered here, especially at this table.

Frederick Buechner, “The News of the Day,” in Secrets in the Dark (2006 HarperSanFrancisco) pp.245-250.

Joanna Seibert. joannaseibert.com