Reflections
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This Is How A Man Falls In Love
“I believe passionately that Christianity is a way of life, not a theological system with which one must be in intellectual agreement. I feel that Christ would admit into discipleship anyone who sincerely desired to follow him, and allow that disciple to make his creed out of his experience; to listen, to consider, to pray, to follow, and ultimately to believe only those convictions about which the experience of fellowship made him sure. This is how a man falls in love. He could not write a creed about the loved one at the beginning. He finds someone whose life he would like to share, and, if she is willing to…
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Happy Birthday, Sissy
Today is my sister’s birthday. The only human being in all creation who shares my DNA, my memories of our childhood, and the mysterious fabric of what it meant to be raised by our mother. Happy Birthday, Sissy. I love you very much. ~ Bubba
- Church Life, Daily Life, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Lectio Divina, Prayers, Reflections
Slight Return
I was a gangly skint-kneed sliver of a boy of eleven when I became a Christian. The term we used then was “getting saved,” and I got saved at a summertime Vacation Bible School worship service to which I had been invited by my best friend. Since that first terrifying moment when I stepped out into the aisle to make my way down front, feeling as if an invisible hand were pushing me along, my path has looped around to some interesting landmarks. I started out at the Church of the Nazarene, then faded into twilight in my teen years as I visited but never committed to a number of…
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Mystery, Life, Syllables
My dear friend Father James, the Trappist monk who lives at Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, has been much on my mind lately. I wrote him this morning and hope to hear back from him soon. He has been having some health problems lately, and at his age, his remaining time is speeding up, is precious, is like the dust on a butterfly’s wing: fine and invaluable. I watched a video about the abbey on Youtube and noticed near the end a series of photos taken in the woods surrounding the monastery. Some of the pictures were taken near Thomas Merton’s (Father Louis’s) hermitage on the grounds there.…
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The Fogs Of August
My mother and grandmother taught me to count the number of foggy mornings during the month of August. The number, they told me gravely, would correspond to the number of snows in the coming winter. I’ve tracked the August fogs more closely since we purchased our little farm here, and while never exact, the ratio of fogs to snows is fairly close. So far this month, we have had nine fogs out of twelve mornings. Last winter was quite mild, and the old-timers in these parts are already beginning to murmur about how “we’re due for a bad, bad winter.” We shall see. I recently re-watched one of my favorite…
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Gate Of Heaven
I worked from home today, an experience which was not as peaceful as I had anticipated. But I enjoyed the solitude very much, and in spite of my many mistakes and blind alleys, I had a productive day. It was also nice to be able to take the dogs outside and stretch my legs whenever I wanted. While wearing a t-shirt and shorts. And snacking on pork skins. In bare feet. With Jackie Gleason playing the background. How many of you know who Jackie Gleason was? Many have watched the old “The Honeymooners” sitcom on television. Some of you likely have seen Gleason’s masterful performance as Minnesota Fats in the…
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Undertakings
Jinx and I were up before the sun lifted above the fog, and the air was as cool as an August morning’s can be, full of mist and memories and murmurs, and we set out for our stroll. On the way back, the sun pierced the fog and clattered down upon us in arrows and spears, and the birds sensed the change and their cries grew more boisterous and they began to swoop from tree to fence to building to post to rock. The gravel crunched beneath my shoes and a chipmunk scampered across my path, his tail held straight up. Jinx was looking in the other direction and I…
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Mist Will Lift
A coworker who sits next to me at my office tested positive for the Covid-19 thingamajig, so I was required to be tested at a local hospital. It was interesting to note what a ghost town the hospital was. I was expecting squads of harried nurses and doctors to be running up and down the hallways, calling out orders and wheeling lifeless bodies on gurneys and asking for assistance. But the place was all but abandoned. A girl young enough to be my granddaughter performed my test, which, while not especially painful, was markedly unpleasant. She asked me if I was okay when she removed the fourteen foot swab from…
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Bandito
I stood out in the back yard this morning just before dawn, looking up at the gourd birdhouses and listening to the gradual crescendo of birdsong as the eastern sky brightened by degrees. I thought back to yesterday, a singularly grueling day, wasting my finite hours in the company of people with whom I have nothing in common, hours in which I was forced to work with my alleged “supervisor,” a younger woman so vapid, so mean-spirited, so coarse, so comprehensively ugly that I am tempted to think I live and breathe under God’s curse. But such thoughts make me recoil with that familiar jerking reflex action. You’re not…
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Will Find You Out
The weather in these mountains is very unusual these days. The heat is absolutely tropical, with moist, saturated air — still air, with no breeze at all — and the sun feeling closer to the earth, the way it feels in Texas. Thunderstorms every day and every night, and the insects are thriving and the frogs are practicing for their annual Dog Days oratorio. Speaking of frogs, this morning a fine specimen was perched atop the rail around the back deck. I’ve heard that when one sees a turtle on top of a fence post, one can be sure that someone put him there. The frog is probably a lot…