Support. I'm thinking of Isaac Watts' paraphrase of Psalm 23: "When I walk through the shades of death Thy presence is my stay. One word of Thy supporting breath Drives all my fears away." A week ago, Nabeel Qureshi, Christian apologist and author of Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus and No God but One, announced that his doctors have…
Five Minute Friday (on Saturday): rise
I played piano for a funeral this morning. Funerals make me think. One day, if the Lord doesn't come back first, this body is going to stop, whether by external or internal means. These fingertips won't be able to feel the raised spot where a scrape is healing on the back of my hand; these…
Noticing, Day 22: working backwards
Today I noticed how the sweetgums and poison ivies are taking their habitual lead in donning autumn attire, flaming out from among their more reticent deciduous neighbors. Is this a case, I wonder, of God giving more honor to those that lack honor? Whether it is or no, each fall I'm stunned by this glory of what…
while waiting
For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory. 2 Corinthians 3:11 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. Romans 8:18 Therefore we do not…
“a fiercer delight”
"What we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to…
Dune Study #2
Dawn draws me up and up from bed to rooftop with a calling, many-waters voice, breath of blooms, glory with which the earth – sand, sea, roof – shines. Birds sing this light which might draw dry bones up and up from the valley of death to stand sinewed, to walk from death into dawn…
detecting and dying: the need for an artist
Real life is not at all like detective stories. At least, Dorothy L. Sayers says it isn't, and I can aver the truth of her saying: it is not a matter of clear "problems" and "solutions" which exist in a one-to-one relationship. "We do not . . merely examine the data to disentangle something that was in them…
webbery
Mindful, no doubt, of the late-October-ness of the season, the neighborhood Arachnes conspired together to festoon the world with webbery. A dense fog conspired with them to make ropes and nets of diamonds, which a persistent sun revealed on my morning walk yesterday. In the Maine Maritime Museum, we looked at a tiny model of a rope-making shed. A…
Between Blue Rocks 