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Between Sorrow And Joy
I recently read someone’s observation that Good Friday is the end of all things, and also the beginning of all things. The phrase is a barbed one; it stings and stays with me. I think on how Christ’s disciples must have felt after their master was lowered from the cross. limp and bloodless and silent as a slaughtered lamb. The women took charge of caring for His body, and they must have discussed the burial details with the generous Arimathean, Joseph, and the men present must have seen the body taken away, and then the reality settled down on them. How silent it must have been. In their shock and…
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A.D. 2023
We reflexively say “Happy New Year” to each other, but this year, the phrase feels foreign and odd. So I will say to you all, may this year be a year of good choices and noble behavior on your part, and may each day bring you a greater sense of meaning, that you are not merely existing and waiting to escape this life, but rather that you are wringing every bit of experience and fullness from each day. And perhaps this will lead not just to happiness, but also to deep, serene contentment. And that would be a happy new year. ~ S.K. Orr
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The First Sunday in Lent
Another glorious day. I think it got up to about 72F today. Started out cloudy and gradually cleared through the day, with the breeze intensifying every hour. The weather people — none of whom are fit to touch the hem of my maternal grandmother’s apron when it comes to weather forecasting — are saying it’ll be snowing by this Friday night. Mrs. Orr and I had a lovely, leisurely, reading morning, settled in chair and sofa with dogs all around, our new used treasures piled before us, and we dipped into them like a all you can eat dim sum restaurant. I spent part of the day outside planting bulbs…
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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…