Daily Life
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My Thoughts, They Are Provoked
WJT posted one of his singular pieces that troubled me, delighted me, and had me staring at the floor, lost in thought, long after I read it, just as his classic Supergod Delusion essay kept me chewing on his words for weeks after I read the post. Reading this sort of material doesn’t finally answer any questions for me, but like a good Zen koan, the act of reading and the subsequent attempts to digest such things helps me see myself with greater clarity. For the majority of my Christian life, I saw myself as a pretty smart fellow. It was a liberating but excruciatingly painful day when I began…
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Snippets
I let the dogs out into the back yard while my wife was drying her hair tonight, just as full dark settled down onto the green slopes. Looking north, I saw a series of silent flashes, looking just like artillery does from a distance. But the boom-boom-booms never came, never rolled towards me. Silent and silver. Heat lightning. I opened the door and called to Mrs. Orr, and she came outside. After we watched for a minute, I took two chairs down into the yard and we sat for a while and watched the quiet light show, including the lightning bugs that danced in the woods and along the fenceline.…
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Summer Comes In
While the spotted twins snoozed on the back porch this morning, I walked for an hour and inhaled summer’s new air, holding it in my lungs like a stoner, letting it absorb into my body and give me a morning buzz. The neighbor’s feed corn is thigh-high, the leaves grinning their green grins beneath the sun’s path. While I leaned against the fence and scanned the rows, I could still hear the dogs — two yappy Dachshunds and a basset mix — carping about my temerity in daring to pass their house on the way to the pastures. I knew that if I was near Jinx and Bluebelle, I would…
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Still Here
The days have sifted through my fingers and are piled in drifts at my feet. Where did they go? Where? We’ve been mired in things automotive, trying to get our car back from the body shop, who ultimately didn’t total her, but said she is fixable. We’ll see. I’ve also been spending quite a bit of time researching jobs. I was so excited to get my current work-from-home position, but the phrase “out of the frying pan, into the fire” has taken on a new immediacy for me. At my age, finding something rewarding and do-able is daunting. Still, one must try. All this to say, I’m still here, dear…
- Bluebelle, Church Life, Daily Life, Holy Days, Jinx, Movies, Mrs. Orr, Music, Photographs, Prayers, Reflections, Saints
Memorials
I walked the road the other morning alone, leaving Jinx and Bluebelle to romp in the backyard while I strolled the mountain lane, and I noticed how the gravel at the edges of the road had been ground down by the tires and tires and tires until it resembled nothing so much as gray aquarium rock. If I had one of those glass boxes full of water and marine life and topped with a humming light — I’ve never in my life owned an aquarium, and usually only think of them when I read Loren Eisley, who spent a childhood making and stocking his own — I would scoop up…
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Brevities
This morning my wife headed down into town. She had only been gone about fifteen minutes, and I had just poured myself another cup of coffee and wedged myself between the spotted twins on the couch when my phone rang. It was Mrs. Orr, and I immediately knew something was wrong. I heard her address me by the term of affection the grandchildren use, PeePaw, and I heard something in her voice and said, “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” And I listened as she told me that she had just gotten down to the bottom of the mountain and was near our little post office when two deer streaked out…
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Mother’s Day
First things first — a happy and blessed Mother’s Day to all of my dear readers who are mothers. May your day be peaceful and may your hearts find some happiness in thoughts of your children or of your own mother, even if you are in the midst of sadness today. I remember Mother’s Day in churches in my younger years. Many of the Protestant churches had a tradition where all of the mothers would receive a red rose, and the non-mothers and the adult men would receive a small rose bud…red for those whose mothers were living, and white for those whose mothers had died. Several years ago, I…
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Nearing The End of April
The days are longer, walking in with soft daybreaks and shuffling out with glowing coral sunsets, and the early, surprising heat has modulated itself back to where it should be, and it would be easy to unwind at least eighteen of the hours of the day outside under the dome of pollen and barnswallows and floating spider webs. I’ll get this out of the way first — I haven’t even tried to work on my memoirs for a while. There are some things, some images and events that are too evocative of too much rawness, and my instincts tell me to sidestep them for a little while until it’s time…
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A Sunday
Winter feels over, though I suspect that we’ll have blackberry winter yet, and the frost will burn the tips of the tender things in the coming mornings. Today we saw 83F, and we were forced to put out the fans on the back porch. . The dogs lolled around on the warm boards, the bees and wasps flew their missions against us, the dandelions straightened themselves out on the green expanse, the birds gamboled and frisked, and the snakes made an appearance as well, prompting Mrs. Orr to ask me to cut down the Japanese magnolia at the southeast corner of the house. The lithe black things seem to be…
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Shut Down Upon Our Little Days
I’ve always been something of a worrier, a personal trait that has never done me or anyone around me any good. Like so many other of my quirks, I have tried to pray it away or master it by stern self-discipline, but it remains as much a part of me as my freckles or my bone structure. Last time we were back in Texas, I found a tattered little prayer book in an antique store and bought it for five dollars (I’ve since learned that a used copy of this book sells on a major website for something like $80 or $90). Stuffed inside its pages were various holy cards…