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Lauds
From this morning’s Office: In a desert, pathless, and waterless land: so have I come before Thee in the holy place, that I might see Thy power and Thy glory. From Psalm 62 — Deus, Deus Meus This spoke to me as I said it aloud in the quiet room with the dogs snoring and the clock ticking and the crucifix gleaming in the soft light. I am grateful for it, for the words and the Spirit behind the words, for the salmon-tinted dawn roaring up outside in the east, and for the unmapped day ahead. Grateful for all of it. ~ S.K. Orr
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Recoverable And Precious
I have been working for some time now on a memoir, a memoir focused on a particular area of my life and a particular person. As the stack of pages grows incrementally, I find myself remembering things long forgotten, and discarding memories that I once thought important but now see as distractions. As with all the things I have ever undertaken in my life, I feel inadequate to the task, but I also feel a strong compelling hand in the small of my back, pushing me forward as certainly as my own fingers push the pencil along the page of my notebooks. Reading this evening in one of Frederick Buechner’s…
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August Moon
When I opened my eyes in the pre-dawn stillness this morning, I had the Arkle-esque thought, “What do You have for me today?” Then I noticed the faint light sifting in through the curtains. When I went to the front door, I saw the full moon exactly at the end of our driveway, a perfect sight-picture as if in a scope, centered between trees on either side and between heaven and earth above and below. My wife and I crept down the driveway to look at it and try to take photos of it, but such photos are always disappointing. Cellphones can never capture majesty. The Indians, who once lived…
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Sanctae Scripturae
In the arid palm of August, this region is not as hot as Texas but it is hot enough to drive me inside for most of the day. I bookend the hours on days like this with a walk and a long sitting/meditating/praying/reading session before the sun gets too high in the sky and then again after it drops behind the western ridge. The stretch in between is taken up with whatever piddling and puttering can be accomplished inside, in the cool dark cathedral of home. This morning, I sat out in the piney shade of the front yard, breviary on my knees, and with the stiff breeze it was…