Reflections
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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…
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Purpose
I have watched, and am become as a sparrow all alone on the housetop. — Psalm 102:7 (Douay-Rheims Version) Last night at twilight, a large woodpecker lighted on the utility pole in the back yard. He made a few desultory taps on the treated wood, then scurried to the top and sat there, looking around, his magnificent head a flash of color in the ebbing light of a day that was on the edge of slipping into the past forever. The bird began to sing, the sound an exotic, quasi-tropical series of notes as staccato as the ones his beak made in the weathered fibers of the pole. Ten to…
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Respite From Madness
While all the madness swirls around us, let me encourage you to support something truly worthwhile, as opposed to the false and foolish trash one encounters in the world. Here is a modest documentary in production that could use the help of people who have not succumbed to ClownWorld, Inc. The documentary focuses on the plight of small ranchers in the USA. As someone noted, the people featured in the documentary and the people producing it are not the sort who will bend the knee to nor wash the feet of degenerate agitators. They are more worthy of your support than any sports team or network streaming service or woke…
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Day Of Sighs
I drove to work, almost able to see the miasma of lies and evil hanging like summer fog in the air through which I moved. Natural beauty almost always lifts me out of myself and helps me forget the ugliness within and without, but yesterday, I could feel it affecting me, entering my spirit’s lungs, sickening me. Arriving at my office and parking in my usual spot beneath the tree, I did not want to leave the shelter of my vehicle, did not want to cross that parking lot, did not want to enter that building where profit is king and spiritual realities are, at best, sneer-fodder. I wanted to…
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A Jinxotic Interlude
Our nearest neighbor recently acquired a puppy who just happens to be about the same age as Jinx. He was supposed to be a basset hound, but turns out that he’s a basset/lab mix, as black as any lump of coal ever mined in these hills, low to the ground, sturdy as a sack of cement, ears down to yar, hilarious gait. He came a’callin’ the other evening, having escaped the confines of his own fenced yard. Jinx and I were sitting outside, enjoying the breeze in the shade, watching the birds. I was half-reading, absently scratching his ears while he sat beside me, leaning against my chair, the one…
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Eyes Without A Face
On the drive to work, the approach of summer announced itself with the early bright sky. I am still pleased with how clear the skies are these days. Ever since this manufactured worldwide crisis began, the murky web of vapor trails in the sky has been almost completely nonexistent. To my eyes, the sky seems bigger, clearer, realer. Even at night, the effect seems pronounced, with the stars appearing nearer and more…present with me. When I arrived at work after a week away, the tree beneath which I park seemed fuller and lusher, its purplish leaves nodding in the morning breeze. I touched my cheek to one of the leaves…
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Reliable Light
It’s a curious thing, a purely human situation, to propose to accomplish something and to saturate the attempt with prayer and focus and keen energy….and then to have the door slammed in one’s face and the word “NO!” shouted into one’s ear with the terrible power of God’s own acoustics. My wife and I are sitting in our little farmhouse as the dark covers the grassy acres outside. We are stunned with the rapidity with which all the things we had hoped for in this past week fell apart and melted into nothingness. I don’t think we have given into despair, but it feels like despair. Disappointment and disillusionment and…
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Under Gaze
I sit in the cool shade of the tree I park under at work. I’m probably foolish, but it seems to me that the leaves are moving in deliberate patterns, that the tree is gesturing to me with its arms, that my presence is not unnoticed, nor is it unimportant. I think about taking a nap, but a mockingbird wants to talk. I sit with my chin in my palm and listen to my own self. This is the biggest responsibility I’ve ever taken on, the biggest risk, this looming thing. Think I can do it? Guess I have to try. Are You going to help me any? Reckon You…
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Peonies And Honeysuckle
I awoke this morning and inhaled a lungful of the sweetest, most floral air I’ve tasted in some time. The sky was lightening up in the east and the birds were already warming up for their concerto. The coffee tasted good and the floorboards were cool and smooth beneath my feet, and I wasn’t too, too achey or groany, so it was starting off to be a decent late May Wednesday. Then I made the mistake of checking the local news. The governor of my state has issued a mandate that all of his cattle must henceforth. wear a face mask while in public. My own voice blended with the…
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Once Was Open
At the foot of our mountain sits an abandoned auto repair garage. I pass it twice daily on my commute. Gary owned and ran the place. He was a lean, friendly fellow with an open face and direct manner. Shortly after we bought our place years ago, I had need of a mechanic and decided to give Gary’s place a try. It was a good decision. He was honest right down to the ground, a master mechanic, and remarkably fair. He once kept my old pickup truck an entire day, ran it up and down the mountain roads, crawled all over and under it, in an attempt to locate the…