Writings
I can tell you this. If you are going to dwell anywhere for more than a few days, beds are optional but a table is a necessity. I learned that in the jungles of Costa Rica. For the year I went, things were more primitive than they have ever been, before or since. I spent two weeks building a church in a jungle, on a piece of land reachable only by dugout canoe.
About a year ago, Will Willimon (my colleague at Duke) was invited to meet with several students studying to be attorneys. They wanted him to speak to the subject: “On Being a Lawyer and a Christian at the Same Time.” Which not everyone believes is possible.
You don’t have to be very old to know enough Bible to win a pot of money on Jeopardy. But you have to have a few years under your belt to understand enough Bible to win (or even survive) in the game of life. Where the Bible is concerned, you can learn it by reading it.
In the tradition of the late Sam Levinson, Harry Golden was a popular Jewish author and after-dinner speaker whose stories I first encountered in a delightful collection entitled “Only In America.” In one of his essays, he said he was puzzled, as a child, by his father’s religious habits. For although his father loudly and frequently proclaimed his disbelief, he never missed a service at the local synagogue.
