Prayers
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Dividing Asunder
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12, Authorized Version) It’s always interesting for me to ask people questions about things I assume they understand, only to learn that my assumption was misguided. For example, the New Testament verse referenced above clearly delineates between soul and spirit; the divinely-inspired (I trust) writer assumes such a delineation. And yet when I have asked Christians to explain the difference between soul and spirit, I have received less than…
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She Grieves
We visited a town in a nearby state this weekend and spent most of a day browsing through an enormous arts & crafts festival. We were walking in an alley when we saw a handsome German Shepherd tethered to a long leash in a yard. We stopped and spoke to the dog, at which point her owner saw us from her back door and came out to say hello. The lady was about my age and had a strong speech impediment. She also had a sweet and guileless personality. She explained that the dog’s name is Mollie, and that she was until recently a K-9 officer in the local police…
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Poor Little Thing
She came to the office today, and this has been my only arena of contact with her for the years that I’ve been aware of her life. Her daughter always brings her, and together they pass through the doors meek and bowed and deferential, wearing the mien of learned helplessness, carrying the rooted resignation of their bloodline but lacking the grit. They see me as an authority, me — and no matter how soft or unassuming or passive I present myself to them, I have never been able to convince them that I am from their world, not the world of my employers. She wears knit gloves and a wool…
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Glimpse Impression
The car moved towards me in the parking lot this morning when I arrived. It was still dark, and the lights on their tall poles threw their long cone-beams down onto the damp asphalt. I heard it before I saw it, a rough, laboring engine in an older vehicle. I stopped to let it pass before crossing the lot. The light fell on the car and showed me the driver. Single mom, I thought. She was young, with still-wet hair plastered down on her head, her face full of the kind of worried concentration that comes from paying bills with credit cards, accepting donations from food pantries and smug relatives,…
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Holy Regret
A friend and I were talking early this morning about our respective experiences in the institutional church. The conversation was like a ride in a crop-duster, full of swoops and dives and wing-waggles, sometimes peaceful, sometimes thrilling, constantly flowing. And after the conversation, I sat at my desk, thinking about the things he’d told me and the things I’d told him, and I reached a conclusion. I’ve committed many sins and made many stupid decisions over the decades. But I don’t regret any of those things with the intensity and shame that I feel when I think of the pious boilerplate that I offered so many people when talking about…
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Stories And Wishes
“Once upon a time…” Those words, flowing from the mouth of my mother or a school teacher, or rising off the page to meet me — those words were enough to fill me with the most immediate of joys. A story was beginning. Troubles were coming for the young hero. A battle of some sort was about to be joined. Disaster would come so close. And then good would win the day, and with the end of the story would come relief…and the desire to hear it again. I suspect that many people today think of their lives as a movie, starring themselves, complete with soundtrack and innovative camera angles.…
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Perchance, Perchance
My questions never end, you know. And sometimes I am unprepared to even ask them, to form them into sensible words. I awaken sometimes and am so sure, so very sure, that someone...someone was talking with me just before I opened my eyes. I kick back to the surface of Here and when I lift my conscious face out of Wherever I Was, I am disoriented and off-balance, as if someone pulled a crutch from beneath my arm or a chair from under me. Perhaps my Father has sealed the answers to my questions in a scroll, in a book, and perhaps I am the only one worthy to break…
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Departures
The hummingbirds are migrating south now, and it seems that our regulars have already left. Last week, right in the middle of the repugnancy in the cellar, I had scrubbed and cleaned all the feeders and filled them with fresh nectar. The next day after doing so, I went out to watch the little things as they fed, but none were there. Since last Thursday, I have seen only one hummingbird, and he was a male with a very short bill that I have never seen before, probably a migrating fellow passing through and stopping off at a friendly place he’d heard about in some avian chatroom. I looked all…
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Lances In Darkness
Because we didn’t own a car when I was a boy, I was always thrilled to ride in one. The speed of modern transport has never lost its magic for me, and this perpetual appreciation stems from remembering how it feels to walk to or from home when hot and tired while watching cars purr past with their air conditioning and comfortable bench seats. I used to play a mental game anytime I rode in a car. I would imagine I had a long, long sword, sharper than the stropped razor’s in R.V.’s barber shop, longer than a vaulter’s pole, extending out the passenger side window. And as we would…
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The Soul’s Language
Prayer begins by talking to God, but it ends by listening to Him. In the face of Absolute Truth, silence is the soul’s language. — Venerable Fulton J. Sheen