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My Thoughts, They Are Provoked
WJT posted one of his singular pieces that troubled me, delighted me, and had me staring at the floor, lost in thought, long after I read it, just as his classic Supergod Delusion essay kept me chewing on his words for weeks after I read the post. Reading this sort of material doesn’t finally answer any questions for me, but like a good Zen koan, the act of reading and the subsequent attempts to digest such things helps me see myself with greater clarity. For the majority of my Christian life, I saw myself as a pretty smart fellow. It was a liberating but excruciatingly painful day when I began…
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The Fourth Sunday in Lent
When Jinx and I went for our walk this morning, a group of cows was standing near the horizon, the pink-hued sun about to rise behind them. One of the cows was clearly trying to calve. I waited and watched for a minute, but Jinx was cavorting around in the field adjacent to that one, and I didn’t want to disturb the mama while she was in such a difficult situation, so I walked on. By the time we returned, she was gone. I don’t know if she gave birth to the calf, or if she simply relocated. There are so many spring calves in the pastures right now, it…
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Septuagesima Sunday
There was snow on the ground this morning, but it was all gone by noon, a quiet rain melting it all down into the winter grass, clearing the way for more on the way overnight. Jinx and I did a fair amount of rambling, and I spent quite a bit of time examining the buds on the bushes and shrubs in the woods. The green is slumbering, but it will awake. Will Arthur ever awake? Or will his England stagger on without him, growing colder and more pecked-apart by the hour? I envy those who have legends. Here, in my haunted South, we have no more legends. We have kudzu-choked…
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Okay, Then…
It’s 0530 as I write this, and the temperature is 43F, with a sunny 73F forecast for the afternoon. When I pulled back the shower curtain a while ago, the spider was sitting there, just underneath the spout. He currently resides somewhere out in the back yard…dry and unharmed, but much chillier than he would have been had I not disturbed him. Which brings up the question…am I ever allowed to wander into circumstances that necessitate God removing me from them, removals which elicit grumbling and questions and frowns? I’m well aware that I’m in the tedious territory usually occupied by college students polishing off a bottle of wine in…
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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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In The Press
As I mentioned at the end of my last brief post, I made a pilgrimage that I’ve been pondering for a while. I returned last week and took some time before attempting to set down a few thoughts here. In recent months I’ve undergone considerable emotional and spiritual stress, some of it from factors beyond my control. The cracks in my foundations have begun to show, and my wife suggested with loving firmness that it was time I made the trip I had been talking about for some time. Back during my very brief time in a college classroom, I had the good fortune to sit under the teaching of…