- Church Life, Daily Life, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Mrs. Orr, Photographs, Quotations, Reflections
Lanes And Patterns And Oh, Forward…
Most of us experience brief flashes in our lives during which we are aware of the singularity of a particular moment. This is special. This will never come again. I have never experienced this before. These flitting glitters of awareness have usually vanished before we can fully form a thought about them. The weather this week has been so astonishingly gorgeous….I have exhausted all the daylight hours staring like a lovestruck schoolboy out through the pollen-painted panes of the windows and doors. It has been special. And this particular weather pattern will never come again. I have never before experienced this exact pattern of light and leaf and life. For…
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Bless The Beasts
Last night while my wife and I were relaxing, I watched the spotted twins romp. The ever-sleeping Dixee paid them no heed, continuing to slumber in her little bed by my wife’s chair, undisturbed in her deafness and warm in her sweater. It’s never a sure bet as to which dog will start the donnybrook. When Jinx does it, he usually sits above Bluebelle and growls at her, a rising wail that concludes with three or four sharp barks. While he’s barking at his sister, he’s looking around at us to see if we’re watching. Then he moves to Bluebelle and starts gnawing on a leg or snapping at her…
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Gradual Chill
It was a bringdown to return to work after a four-day weekend, but there were a few pleasant moments, one of which was talking to a woman in her nineties who lives in Van Lear, KY. I mentioned the Van Lear coal mines that the late Loretta Lynn sang about, and the lady volunteered that at this time of year, when the trees and hillsides are bare, she can see Loretta’s old home place from her back porch. She mentioned that Loretta’s brother’s nearby store is still in operation. Mrs. Lynn came from a time that has completely vanished now, and we will never see a world like hers again.…
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Drained
This morning when I awoke, it was 46F. It will get down to about the same temperature tonight. The day was one of those luminous ones, the kind that start with swirling showers of yellow and gold and red leaves, the kind with high puffy clouds riding across the sky so blue it frightens the eyes, clouds lit from within with the high-wattage bulb of glory, the kind where the warm, buttery air carries within it the scent and hint of the frost that is coming on like a jove, the killing, revivifying frost, the dear rime of the earth’s whirl. It was a difficult day to be trapped inside…
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All The Help
While getting ready for work, I glanced down at the trash can in my bathroom. In stark relief against the white interior was a daddy longlegs (harvestman), busily scrambling in an attempt to escape from the situation he’d gotten himself into. Watching the little thing, I thought back to the day when my wife rescued a chipmunk from a wading pool in our back yard. By the time she discovered it, the poor creature had almost exhausted itself swimming round and round, trying to find a way out of the circular and watery hell into which it had fallen. She lifted the chipmunk out and laid it on the grass,…
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Wraith
My wife drew my attention last night to the signs in front of a house near our place. The local funeral homes place these little signs, reading “Slow — Funeral” on either side of homes where someone has died, presumably to encourage an atmosphere of quiet and to discourage solicitors and other annoyances. This morning when I drove past the house, I looked to see if there was a funeral wreath on the door, and there it was, black and somber and silent. The house usually has a rather festive air to it. The owners keep candles and lights in the windows, they decorate lavishly for Christmas, and they keep…
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A Wonderful Plan
This morning I read a post by Dr. Bruce Charlton, a post examining the idea of finding the spiritual — the significant — in everyday life. Dr. Charlton uses Rudolf Steiner as a platform from which to dive into this topic. I had never heard of Steiner before reading of him in the past on Dr. Charlton’s blog, and I will confess that my attempts to read Steiner have not panned out well. I lack the intellectual muscle-tone to heft this sort of weighty writing (I often have to read some of Dr. Charlton’s essays several times before I can grasp the points he is making). But the central idea…