-
A Little Dog
If you are the sort of person who prays for animals, please pray for our little elderly dog, Dixee. She is undergoing surgery today. A few years back, she developed a cancerous growth and was treated for this. A new, more sinister-looking growth has appeared on her leg and surgery is needed not only to remove it, but also to biopsy it and arrive at a prognosis. Our main concern is that due to her age and increasing frailty, the general anesthesia may be too much for her. We are prepared emotionally if she doesn’t survive the surgery, but I would still ask for your prayers, that the veterinary surgeon…
-
Saturday Before Holy Week
The day was odd. After mild temperatures all week, today saw snow all day, on and off, until about 5 pm. Sunny one minute, confectioners sugar in a tornado the next. It frosted last night and I covered Mrs. Orr’s new roses. I will do the same again tonight, because they are leafy and lush and thriving. One dislikes seeing good work undone. I’m uncomfortable in the shackles of the awareness that I’m almost three days late in posting my most recent memoir entry. I have half a draft ready and will, unless books and dogs and chores distract me, finish up tomorrow night and post it. I don’t listen…
-
The First Sunday in Lent
Another glorious day. I think it got up to about 72F today. Started out cloudy and gradually cleared through the day, with the breeze intensifying every hour. The weather people — none of whom are fit to touch the hem of my maternal grandmother’s apron when it comes to weather forecasting — are saying it’ll be snowing by this Friday night. Mrs. Orr and I had a lovely, leisurely, reading morning, settled in chair and sofa with dogs all around, our new used treasures piled before us, and we dipped into them like a all you can eat dim sum restaurant. I spent part of the day outside planting bulbs…
-
39 for 35; or, 25 or 6 to four
Our maple reawakens The dogs awakened us extra-early today, which annoyed my beloved wife to no end. We let them outside, but made them wait for breakfast while we went back to sleep for a while. Mrs. Orr never really did get her sea legs the rest of the day, though, and felt groggy. Worse than toddlers, trust me. When I stepped out into the back yard, I saw the maple was decked with tiny pink blossoms. As quick as the moon changes, it will be covered in suncatching leaves. It’s hard to believe that it was a slender sapling, smaller in diameter than my wrist, when we planted it…
- Bluebelle, Church Life, Daily Life, Holy Days, Jinx, Lectio Divina, Photographs, Prayers, Reflections
First Friday In Lent
These last few months, I have felt like the tip of a bullwhip, yanked back and forth, snapping and popping with violence that almost tore my spiritual head off, then easing back to a casual, flyfishing rhythm for a few weeks, then back to the crack and snap. Being able to leave my former job and start a new one has helped immensely. It is a truly good thing to be able to work from the home that I love so much. Mrs. Orr enjoys having me here, and the dogs all seem to like it, too. The new job is not without its own set of stressors, but most…
-
The Breeze So Warm and Mild
A rainbow split the warm sky yesterday evening while we were enjoying some porch-sitting out back. The birds very active, as was our chipmunk, and the 75 degree air was a welcome relief to arthritic stiffness and the inactivity that frigid weather imposes. But today the temperature is dropping steadily, the rain will resume again in a couple of hours, and by morning, we’re forecast to have lots of heavy, wet snow. The kind that snaps power lines and turns mountain roads into luge tracks. May it not come to pass. I thought I’d share a cute video and a beautiful song, if you will indulge me, dear readers. First,…
-
Christmas Eve
Keeping Watch — A Christmas Eve Story for Lewis B I can hear the men talking at the fire outside the door, sitting in their circle and making their words in their low, rough tones. The sound of men’s voices usually soothes me, pulls a soft blanket of comfort across me. But tonight the pain is too much within me, and my breathing is a great and difficult labor, and there is no comfort here for me. The old woman has done all for me that she can do. She is sitting over there next to the lamp, where she always sits when her day’s work is done and she…
-
Winter Begins
And now we sit in the deepest pocket of the year’s darkness, with the night air so still that even the nocturnal predators do not dare to disturb the hush with their cries. We have reached the farthest point on our yearly circle around the great light in the sky, and are now beginning to swing back to complete the ring, spinning always, the great seas and the vast acres containing numberless bones slipping in and out of light and dark, and so it has ever been since ages ago, back when certain words were spoken. It’s difficult when I stand in the yard to remember that this bleak patch…
-
What Matters As Advent Approaches
It felt so cold this morning that I could feel it working in my bones, as if little ice crystals were forming in the synovial fluid of my knuckles and knees and ankles. The world outside was a frosted sheet of patched russet, an expanse of the leaves weighed down by the same sort of tiny ice crystals. While Jinx and I were walking (Bluebelle sticking close to my wife in the warm house), I saw a large red oak leaf detach from the tree over near the cemetery and glide like a paper airplane down, then over, then back this way, then down a little more, then that way,…
-
A Week In
Today the world is a leaf-world. The wind has had its way with things, and the trees are being stripped by the hour, and the shower of color would be, even if unaccompanied by its whispery chorus, an oratorio of the glory of Him Who spoke it all into existence. The little tree under which I park at work is almost completely bare. There is one branch that hangs over the driver’s side door, and the most prominent leaf is the one I touch each morning and each evening when exiting and entering my vehicle. Yesterday I stood in the blue light and contemplated the leaf, and I decided that…