This collection of theological essays, spiritual meditations, public prayers, and biblical interpretations provides a focus, day by day, for contemplation and reflection. By intention they are offered in media res, in the midst of the cacophony and chaos of life and particularly of academic life. These pages are markings along the journey, on the trail, and thus perhaps signposts for others coming along the same way. To some degree, the collection responds to similar, recent publication of 200-word daily selections from the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The assembly of materials revisits a favorite form of an earlier Dean of Marsh Chapel, Howard Thurman. Thurman easily and regularly captured thought and feeling in an assortment of forms--prayer, sermon, hymn, poem, litany, sermon--and worried very little about repetitions or the jostling inherent in formal variety. Charles River follows after these and similar works, and is offered as a daily resource for those receiving and offering, the divine grace of freedom, acceptance, forgiveness, pardon, and love. Robert Allan Hill is currently Dean of Marsh Chapel and Professor of New Testament and Pastoral Theology at Boston University. Since 1981, he has taught in several schools, including McGill University, Syracuse University, Lemoyne College, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Northeastern Seminary, United Seminary, and various church settings. He is the author of An Examination and Critique of the Understanding of the Relationship between Apocalypticism and Gnosticism in Johannine Studies (1997) and Snow Day: Reflections on the Practice of Ministry in the Northeast (2000). Most of his writing, however, has been devoted to weekly sermons.
