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The Pencil Seller
When I was a boy, I used to see an old blind man outside the Kress’s store on Main Street in our town. He would sit on a little chair outside the back entrance, wearing his dark glasses, his white cane propped against his leg. He would hold out a tin cup and would extend a fistful of white pencils in the other hand, all the while hawking his wares with his impeded speech. He would say “PEN-suls! PEN-suls!” over and over. Every once in a while, some benevolent soul would stop and say “I’ll take two,” etc. and drop coins into his cup. The old man would nod in…
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It Comes To This
Time comes when a man realizes, truly and finally, that he will never do any of those things he’s kept in the footlocker of dreams in the back of his life’s closet. They call themselves the Chicks now, because they’re ashamed of the word “Dixie” and because they’re progressive and they’re on the right side of history. Mind you, they don’t have much of a career anymore, and they’ve never been introspective enough to take the blame for their Maines-inflicted fatal wound, but they were once very enjoyable. And the lyrics to this song are poignant and powerful. And tonight, the lyrics are personal. UPDATE — I replaced the video…
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Walking Up An Incline
Walking up to the mailbox today, I had an epiphany of sorts. I never leave myself alone. I am forever telling myself that I need to be doing x, y, or z. I am perpetually dissatisfied with how I spend my time. I sift through my past days, months, decades, and ignore the glittering flecks. Instead, I focus on the dark sludge along the bottom lip of the pan. There’s always some project that I should be doing. Some habit I need to break. Some improvement I need to make. Some shortcoming I need to fix. Such a mess. There are two of me, (And there are two of you,…
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Holy Regret
A friend and I were talking early this morning about our respective experiences in the institutional church. The conversation was like a ride in a crop-duster, full of swoops and dives and wing-waggles, sometimes peaceful, sometimes thrilling, constantly flowing. And after the conversation, I sat at my desk, thinking about the things he’d told me and the things I’d told him, and I reached a conclusion. I’ve committed many sins and made many stupid decisions over the decades. But I don’t regret any of those things with the intensity and shame that I feel when I think of the pious boilerplate that I offered so many people when talking about…
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One From The Possum
I woke up this morning with this song in my head, and thought I would share it here. ~ S.K. Orr
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The Unquiet Mind
This morning’s lectio divina reading highlighted this verse: The things that thou hast not gathered in thy youth, how shalt thou find them in thy old age? Ecclesiasticus 25:5, Douay-Rheims version Thinking through the implications of the question, my mind is unquiet. How shall I find those things I neglected in greener years? And how many of those things are there? ~ S.K. Orr
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Answering For It — REVISED
Near my job is a building I pass every day. A low-slung affair in the middle of an over-large parking lot, it resembles a bank or a real estate office. The grounds are aggressively landscaped, deliberately shaded with ornamental trees, marked out by mulched quilts of annual flowers and bright shrubs. There are always cars in the parking lot, even on the weekends. The building is a nursing home. Most mornings when I pass, the front lobby isn’t fully lit, and there are few signs of activity behind its glass walls. But along the exterior walls there are many windows, and the windows are almost all fully lit, even in…