Author Archives: kbryantlucas

In the Christian calendar, it is Holy Week.  Today, Maundy Thursday, is the beginning of the end of Jesus’ life on earth.  Which has got me thinking about Lent and repentance, sacrifice and redemption—and Hell. I grew up a Southern Baptist.  The churches I attended didn’t pay much attention to Lent, the 40 days ofContinue reading “Hell (and Heaven)”

Today I want to share a poem I wrote in 2021, during my sabbatical. For two months I stayed at Cedars of Peace, a place of retreat connected to the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Loretto, in Nerinx, KY. Seven Eastern red cedars surrounded the yard in front of my cabin. Four days after IContinue reading “The Red Cedars”

WHITE PEOPLE, this one’s for us.  Specifically for us.  (Although, of course, anyone is free to read.) When there’s a crisis, we progressive white folks get all riled up and put out our BLACK LIVES MATTER signs and participate in protests, put bumper stickers on our cars, maybe purchase a T-shirt, etc. Then we celebrateContinue reading “For What It’s Worth”

What do you do when your GPS dies?  In my last post I quoted the poet Mark Nepo, from his book Seven Thousand Ways to Listen.  Writing about his experience of emerging from deep thought, driving on a familiar road, but in unfamiliar conditions, suddenly and sharply aware that he doesn’t know exactly where heContinue reading “When the GPS Dies, Part 2”

Part of my sabbatical I am spending alone in a cabin in the Kentucky bluegrass country.  Google Maps predicted that it was a 6+-hour drive from Atlanta via I-75.  Even in normal day-to-day driving, I hate traveling the crowded interstate.  Especially I-285 and I-75 out of Atlanta, people driving at high speeds, with enormous impatienceContinue reading “When the GPS Dies”

Trigger warning:  In this post, I write about a lynching, in a fair amount of detail.  Please be advised. Google “English ivy,”  and after you pass over numerous advertisements for nurseries where you can purchase it, you will find page after page of warning. You see, English ivy is an invasive plant, introduced into theContinue reading “Pulling Up the Roots”

I was born in 1953.  So I came of age during the 60s.  A time of turbulence and upheaval, of questioning and throwing out old norms of behavior.  A cultural revolution.  There was a lot going on:  the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war and protests against it, the assassinations of major public figures, includingContinue reading “The Power That Is Love”

Before I begin I pause to acknowledge the land I currently occupy, lands that rightfully belong to the Mvskoke Nation, a people who lived here for centuries, who tended the soil and raised their crops, birthed and raised their children, celebrated the Green Corn ceremony and other ceremonies that linked them to each other andContinue reading “Remove and Rebuild”

In the summer of 1996, my parents and I were traveling across Montana. We visited the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, and then went down below the National Park Service site to a small building right next to the Little Bighorn River, near where Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and roughly 8,000 people from theContinue reading “From Where I Stand”