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Maundy Thursday
Tomorrow is already Good Friday, and what a wonder it is to be this far along in the year already. Our weather has been quite warm, and we had to actually break down and put on the air conditioning last night after the sun baked the house all day long. I am enjoying the lack of pain in the joints, but I will confess that both Mrs. Orr and I sleep better in the colder weather. We both tossed and turned a lot last night due to the closeness of the room, even though we did have the fan on. It’s supposed to be cooler the next three days, and…
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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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Languages
The super-frigid temperatures have subsided somewhat, and so the snow has had a chance to melt a bit. Today it’s in the 40s, with the high 50s forecast by Friday. If this prediction holds, the New Year will come riding in on a mild current of air. Thought I love the cold weather, it has been nice to walk with Jinx in the evenings and not wince and shiver and grimace against the onslaught of the twin blades of wind and ice crystals. I’ve shoveled with a diligent rhythm against the mountain of leftovers remaining after Christmas day, and we are nearing the end of them. Unlike many others, I…
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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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Rememberance
If I had a large brood of children, and if I sat down to write them a letter by which they might remember me, and if in this letter I offered some general guidelines on how to live a virtuous life and honor my memory… And if, on the other side of this life, I learned that my children were constantly divided against each other because of their individual insistence that each of them had the correct, full, and perfect understanding of my letter, and if I saw them spending long hours analyzing and parsing every syllable of my letter instead of getting on with the business of being my…