I usually tell this traditional story in the character of Mrs. Alice Porter, my southern storytelling character.  When Jesus was born, the evil, wicked King Herod tried to kill all the boy children so he could murder the young king. Angels had shown up in Joseph’s dream and told him to take Mary and Jesus and hightail it for Egypt until the trouble was done. And so he did. It was about the third day on the road to Egypt, when trouble started. Joseph had stopped to rest Jack the donkey, who was seeing the world for the first time. Joseph climbed a large rock to look around the countryside.…

The following poem is by a poet I had not known about until today: D. Gwenallt Jones, an early 20th century Welsh poet. He was raised Roman Catholic Methodist Nonconformist and flirted with Catholicism but never converted. As a young man he became a Socialist and then a Marxist during the two World Wars. Eventually he began to see the sin and self-interest that underlay every person’s actions, including the glorious worker paradise philosophy of the Communist party. He returned to the Christian faith and his mature poetry is both beautiful and faithful. “Sin” by D. Gwenallt Jones When we strip off all our garments,The cloak of respectability and academic…

By Jennifer Lynn Woodruff He was the Word, a wild and dancing Word, before the world began; he danced in flame, and galaxies were born, and songs became the sinew of our bones, and he was Lord. He danced in bread and wine, and in the bright blue fountains of the Water of our birth, and all the bells rang, and along the earth the incense of a prayer rose, fresh and light. He danced in speech, in names that had a power, in dreams with symbols vibrant and unknown, and all that was and is and is to come was whole in grace and worship in that hour. But we…