- Bluebelle, Church Life, Daily Life, Holy Days, Jinx, Lectio Divina, Mrs. Orr, Photographs, Reflections
Daylight And Other Things Saved
An almost-spring rain has been falling most of the day, and the birds have been very busy at the feeders and in the birdbath. The daffodils are up, along with the grape hyacinth. The Virginia bluebells are getting ready to bud out, the forsythia is daubed with yellow up and down its slender branches, and the peach trees are blossoming out as well. A near neighbor’s pear tree is a perfect pink lollypop in the distance, and all the colors are set off by the silvery mist in the hollers. And tonight we move the clocks forward into Daylight Savings Time, and the tone and tenor of the days will…
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Wanderings, Wonderings
There’s a certain liquid but frictioned struggle when I walk through the grass in the morning after it rains. My feet, less sure now, more prone to missteps and the cruelty of unbalancing, skim through the green sea of clover and vetch, leaving long strokes like ski tracks behind me. But I do not turn to look at these tracks as I walk, because I do not trust my own footfalls. This, then, is what aging is: a gradual mistrust of all the powers and agile techniques and reflexive movements that I once took for granted, like a good Catholic who, when he sees death’s cowled head bobbing up over…
- Church Life, Daily Life, Holy Days, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Lectio Divina, Mrs. Orr, Photographs, Prayers, Reflections, Saints
Holy Week
The days have unspooled quickly in this early part of springtime. My interior life has been not in turmoil but in flux, an almost palpable ebb and flow, and through all my misgivings and doubts and ragings and grim, silent musings, I have felt like some sort of antenna, unmoored but still grounded, with invisible signals popping and whizzing around me during my hours. A good friend, who roves across much of the same rocky spiritual landscape I do, recently mentioned in passing how he just might be holding onto a hope that he will one day believe again. That sentiment sang in me like a tuning fork when a…
- Church Life, Daily Life, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Paintings, Quotations, Reflections
The Fleeting Light
Where are the voices crying out, not for agreement with a doctrine or assent to a particular teaching, but for taking virile and perhaps physically fatal responsibility for one’s own reaction to the evil we see around us? The voices that do cry out do so in an attempt to persuade people to agree with them, or to at least debate with them about their position. Who speaks words of comfort for those who cannot and will not trust any of those clamoring for followers? What are the once-faithful and now-bereft to think, to do, to believe? The road to self-knowledge does not pass through faith. But only through the…
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The Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
Yesterday was our day to run errands, including mailing a birthday gift to my sister and shopping for a birthday gift for one of the grandchildren. Since the post office was closed on Saturday and since I had procrastinated in wrapping the gifts and packaging them, we had to resort to one of those UPS stores to get the thing shipped. I spent the morning wrapping each individual gift — small items that represent a variety of my sister’s interests — and then packing everything into a well-used cardboard box. I wrapped the box in plain brown paper and taped it thoroughly and added a hand-lettered shipping label. When we…
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All I’ve Got
I was working at my desk this afternoon when I heard Bluebelle whimper and fuss behind me. I looked back at her, followed her gaze, and saw a lovely young spike buck in the front yard, feeding on whatever caught his liquid brown eye. I watched him for a bit, took a few pictures, and then sat back down. When I looked up again, the buck was gone. He lives with a fully-grown six-pointer, two does, and a fawn in the woods behind our house. It is a never-fading wonder to watch such lithe, muscular beauty move through my world in such an unself-conscious way. And I am grateful. ***…
- Bluebelle, Church Life, Daily Life, Holy Days, Jinx, Lectio Divina, Movies, Music, Photographs, Prayers, Reflections
Saturday of the First Week of Lent
Tonight we make the annoying switch over to Daylight Savings Time. I believe the time changing back and forth is both irrational and also a deliberate thing. Those who rule this world could easily enact a law to keep the time one way or the other, if the hours really do benefit mankind by their placement. but those people choose to do the silly back & forth. I think they do this so they can remind us that they believe themselves more powerful than God. They can speed time up or reverse it, depending on the season, and for no better reason than a bureaucratic whim. Yesterday marked the two-year…
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The Second Sunday Of Advent
“Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.” — Thomas Merton This is the…
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Gratitude
I want to express my thanks to all of you who have reached out to me after my request. Though no clear path has yet been revealed to me, I am strengthened by the show of friendship and concern. Most of all, I am grateful for the prayers. This is no trite statement; my belief in the power and efficacy of prayer is central to all that I am and all that I do, even when I am unfaithful and inconstant. *** Last Sunday was the last Sunday of the Church year, and this coming Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, marks the beginning of the Church year for Anno…
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He Is Risen Indeed
I slipped into sleep last night watching the fire-patterns in the stove, methodically releasing my hold on old hurts and old grudges that had been bedeviling me all evening. Reading earlier in the afternoon in Holy Week: The Complete Offices in Latin and English, I had latched onto a section from the Second Nocturne in Holy Saturday, a selection from Psalm 26: I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living. Expect the Lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord. How often are men exhorted in this day and age to “do manfully?” The rarity…