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Unseen Enemies
Yesterday Jinx cornered two black snakes. Like all of his kind, he has a special hostility for the legless, undulating creatures that appear in our nightmares and in certain gardens. I’m sure Jinx would join me in my disdain and mistrust of anyone who keeps a snake as a pet. Such herpatalogical husbandry is certainly a type of virtue signaling. A very bad type. The bark Jinx used to alert me to the snakes was an interesting cross between his “Hey, there’s a cow coming up the driveway and I think I’ll go herd her out of here!” rhorf and his “There’s a rabbit! I think I’ll see if I…
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Day Of Sighs
I drove to work, almost able to see the miasma of lies and evil hanging like summer fog in the air through which I moved. Natural beauty almost always lifts me out of myself and helps me forget the ugliness within and without, but yesterday, I could feel it affecting me, entering my spirit’s lungs, sickening me. Arriving at my office and parking in my usual spot beneath the tree, I did not want to leave the shelter of my vehicle, did not want to cross that parking lot, did not want to enter that building where profit is king and spiritual realities are, at best, sneer-fodder. I wanted to…
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Cold’s End
And it came to pass that yesterday was a chilly but gorgeous day, and I was as a stranger unto my wife, for I spent long hours of the day outside with the red-spotted dog, starting with a long walk just as the sun was peeking up over the eastern ridge of the Clinch Mountains. Mid-morning, I took Jinx for a ride to the county trash dump. He still has considerable fear of riding in vehicles, but I’ve learned not to try and coax him inside. The cajoling only makes him more skittish. So I just opened the door in advance, and went and got all the trash I was…
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Shine On
The redbuds and dogwoods have been especially vibrant this spring in the Appalachian mountains, and on the drive home this evening I was tempted to sight-see, a temptation my wife strongly warns me against, having been in the passenger seat too many times during my heedless reveries over the years, asking me through tight teeth and compressed lips to please steer the vehicle off the shoulder and back into the lane. The waterfall near our home is now completely obscured by the oaks and poplars along its shoulders, and it rages on unseen until autumn pulls the leafy comforter away. I have to do better with my eating habits. How…
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Content
When I stepped out onto the damp boards of the back deck before dawn, I could hear the spring frogs down in the holler, calling from the natural marsh of the stock pond. Dixee brushed past me out the door, pattering down the steps to relieve herself in the grass, and a cardinal in the pines warmed up, his chips and clicks crescendoing into a song of dark morning color. I saw the wisp of light in the eastern sky and longed to stay at the farm, longed to stay away from town, away from chattering voices and intrusive opinions and the moldy crumbs of civility that pass for conversation…
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Under A Pink Moon
Have you ever noticed it? The way an approaching change in weather can be detected by all creatures beneath the gaze of heaven? Birds will skim the sweet grass, seeking insects before a drenching rain, and cows will lie down in the fields, resting the joints that the coming showers foretell in them, just as the stooped farmer feels the same ground-glass ache in his knotted knuckles. The very trees seem to face the wind and cross their arms, wondering if this will be the toppling day, or if tomorrow will see them still stretching above the quilt of still things, the soil and dirt that listen, that are aware,…
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The Most Catholic Thing
Tomorrow I will embark on the most Catholic thing I’ve done to date: I will begin the 33-day preparation for a consecration to Mary on the Feast of St. Loius de Montfort. I’m looking forward to the focus and the discipline of this preparation. So many of the events swirling in the air today have reminded me of exactly why I began to be drawn to traditional Roman Catholicism some years ago, setting in motion a series of broken friendships and relationships that still grieve and perplex me to this day. *** I saw my bicyclist friend on the side of the road yesterday morning, in the rainy dark. I…
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For The Beauty
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever. The force that drives the water through the rocks Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams Turns mine to wax. And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks. The hand that whirls the water in the pool Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind Hauls my shroud sail. And I am dumb to tell the hanging…
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Winter Has Ended
Today is for me a vivid reminder of all that slumbers during the cold and bleak times, when all seems dark or lost or hopeless or lonely or silent or uncaring. Beneath the covering of dead and moldering leaves, beneath the sheen of tenacious frost, behind the apparently lifeless gray sticks and clumps — life itself slumbers. May the Giver of all life bless us with a strong sense of His presence, and may we expend our energies in following our own unique God-given paths, and less energies in worrying about the jackals that howl and bark from the underbrush on either side. The world is awakening from its slumber.…
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A Quiet And Powerful Parade
On the dark drive to work, I was thinking about how unquiet my heart can sometimes be, and I found myself longing for a more peaceful day. I can always assess my drift towards melancholy because I catch myself sighing a lot. When I arrived at work, my wife forwarded me a text from one of our daughters-in-law, a text with a video attached. The video gave me just what I was longing for. A man in Pennsylvania has a camera set up year-round on his property, stationed at one end of a log that spans a creek. The camera records all the creatures that use the log to cross…