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Prayer Request UPDATE
The cardiac catheterization showed no blockages. In fact, Jason’s cardiovascular system is clean and strong. He’s been discharged home and is getting some much-needed rest. The challenge now is for his primary care physician and the specialists to ascertain exactly what the trouble was. From my own experience, I suspect some sort of gastrointestinal issue. Jason will be following up with his treatment team in the coming days. We’re so very grateful that Jason didn’t have a heart attack or any other critical issues. And we are especially grateful for the prayers of those who interceded for him. Thank you, my dear friends. Thank you so much. May our Father…
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Please Pray
Our eldest son Jason was taken to hospital this morning. “Feels like someone standing on my chest,” he told my wife. We’re awaiting the cardiologist to perform a catheterization. Please pray for Jason, for his wife, for his children, and for my wife. He’s very calm and resolute, but this is a stressful time for the family, especially the waiting. I don’t understand prayer, but I rely on it. And I appreciate any that you might offer, dear friends. ~ S.K. Orr
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Days Of Laze
Saturday’s weird dust-haze from the Sahara was gone Sunday morning, and in its place was a steady, soft curtain of rain. My wife and I deliberately chose to do nothing except rest. We felt somewhat battered by the week, by information we’re trying to process, by decisions we’re trying to reach, and by the time the first day of the week came around, we were more than ready to call “Time out!” and shrug the packs from our shoulders. I spent a large portion of the day with Jinx. Just wandering around, walking the road, exploring the woods and fields, sitting quietly, playing fetch. Jinx, for all his fine qualities,…
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Can Anything Good….
….come out of Africa? Here I am — behold me, a Southern man in whom there is considerable guile. I spent the day walking beneath a haze, a film of wind-blown filth from the dark continent. The normally sparkling mountain air was impure, casting a mosquito net of dark, obscuring Saharan dust across my green mountains and valleys. When the spattering, sporadic showers came, they left muddy smudges on the sleek surfaces they coated. My eyes and nose seemed to sting a bit, and the world felt…hidden. What are those words with similar meanings? Occult. Apocalypse. Jinx and I walked by a neighbor’s fields, and three horses gamboled in the…
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Twinkling Of An Eye
Yesterday morning, I did something I rarely do. I stopped for breakfast on the way to work. I’ve been feeling less-than-stellar lately, mostly because of work-related stress. I try to heed my body’s promptings, and yesterday was one of the times I sensed a clear prompting. I usually don’t eat breakfast during the week, and then I enjoy my wife’s breakfast-brunch feasts on the weekends — I just function better this way. But when I awake feeling puny, I do eat a bite in the mornings in order to fuel myself for the day. So I went through the drive-thru at a locally-owned joint that serves first-rate sausage biscuits. Got…
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Unseen Enemies
Yesterday Jinx cornered two black snakes. Like all of his kind, he has a special hostility for the legless, undulating creatures that appear in our nightmares and in certain gardens. I’m sure Jinx would join me in my disdain and mistrust of anyone who keeps a snake as a pet. Such herpatalogical husbandry is certainly a type of virtue signaling. A very bad type. The bark Jinx used to alert me to the snakes was an interesting cross between his “Hey, there’s a cow coming up the driveway and I think I’ll go herd her out of here!” rhorf and his “There’s a rabbit! I think I’ll see if I…
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Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.…
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Gray Matters
Perhaps it’s the weather. The humidity holds everything close to the ground, makes everything sit on the skin and hang in the senses. My thoughts are that way these days. I’ve been thinking about patterns in my life, especially my perception of myself and my strengths and weaknesses through the years. It’s not very pleasant to honestly face certain truths about myself, and one of those truths is that I spent most of my life believing that I was a lot smarter than I really am. Encountering a few really brilliant men in person didn’t show me the contrast right away, but the perspective provided by the passing years has…
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Count, O Man
The morning light was odd, just a bit more muted than usual, the greens and silvers magnified, the air still and mostly dampened except for a lone Carolina wren with her martial piping from the fence. Jinx slept under the car last night, no doubt enjoying the soft breeze and lack of rain. The frogs were hopping all about when I went outside with Dixee. They always make me jump when I am still soggy with sleep, their sudden motion so low to the ground awakening some ancient fear of things that hop and slither and coil, the things that are blinkless and slick-skinned. Leaving the farm for the day,…
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Summer Song
The American calendar tells me it’s Father’s Day, and also that it’s the second day of summer (I rather like Bruce Charlton’s view on the timing of the seasons). I’m not clear on how many churches have resumed holding public worship services, but for those who are open for bidness today, I’m sure Father’s Day sermons will follow the time-honored American tradition of devoting most of the message to telling the fathers what inept doofuses they are, challenging them to man up, and lashing them with pronouncements about what husbandly headship and wifely submission do NOT mean. For years, I’ve wondered why any father would willingly attend these services, knowing…