…This season’s gardening at my rural estate along Jasper County Beer Can & Garbage Dump Road 400 has been similarly rewarding in matters of archaeology, only without any human remains….
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To read Thomas Merton, we are scold-told
Is middlebrow spirituality*
I never knew that a brow was involved
Because I see the barber every week…
With everything going on lately, the 4th of July this year felt different. The murder of George Floyd, followed by widespread protests affirming that black lives matter, combined with being stuck at home and actually having time to talk and learn about these issues beyond the superficial level, has given me a wake-up call.
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There is a fashion – and as fashions come, they go – of decolonizing one’s bookshelf. The idea is that the reader should self-interrogate his (the pronoun is gender-neutral) cultural influences and determine if they are not right, not approved, not liked. Or, as Pasternak’s officious, oppressive, busy-body Soviet Deputy says, noticed.
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I’ve basically dedicated my life to the pursuit of stories and story-telling. Without stories, everything falls apart. A lot of people try to dismiss fantasy as being escapist or childish. Well Tolkien himself said, “Fantasy is escapist and that is its glory.” You can never diminish the power of storytelling, no matter the genre.
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Summer is better in theory than in practice:
Watermelon days barefootin’ in the shade
Pole-fishing for perch in the neighbor’s pond
Oak-tree afternoons lost in a library book…
Summer sun does shine sheenly
Raising rays radiant rich
Leaves live and grow with glory
Calid colours crowd our land…
They’ve gone and pulled a general down
And all the birds that used to rest
Upon his visage fallen to ground
Will have to seek another nest…
…And it bothered me that these proud mothers who never thought but that their unborn children were alive last year would call this year their family’s first Father’s Day, for fathers become fathers when their child is conceived, just the same as mothers become mothers at that time. If we want the world to accept that truth, we need to start changing how we talk.
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Sailor Moon Crystal chronicles the adventures of the Sailor Guardians, Usagi (Sailor Moon/Princess Serenity), Ami (Sailor Mercury), Rei (Sailor Mars), Makoto (Sailor Jupiter), and Minako (Sailor Venus)… the team faces The Dark Kingdom who want to rule over both the earth and the once inhabited moon…
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The year is 1943, and German troops have entered Italy. The general and the colonel of this unit seeks an audience with the Pope to extract the Catholic Church’s neutrality in an attempt to keep members of the Church from aiding Allied troops, Jews, and refugees fleeing the tyrannical German rule. The Pope does not agree to neutrality…
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Trinity Sunday – a cosmic leap indeed
From the second week in Lent until now
We bless ourselves with holy chemicals
And the awkward elbow-bump of peace
“Hullo. “I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m… I’m Elsie.”
“No, you’re not,” I told her. “You hesitated.”
To my surprise, she stuck her tongue out at me.
“I like to be called Elsie,” she said. “My nurse used to call me that, before they made her leave.”
Falls my heart in th’ocean black!
My knees drop and I do lament!
A life was born and now ‘tis dead—
Nay! Not just one but twain are dead!
Some high school graduates are in the top ten per cent of their class, and that’s good enough for them, but I was in the top eighty percent of my class, and eighty is a higher number than ten, so their. Or they’re. Or something….
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The Sabbath is a day of rest in order to break away from the realm of mankind. It is important to honor the Sabbath because we are spiritual. This world is a space to work and serve one another for six days a week, but on the seventh day, we remember to rest, to let God be in control.
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“Why?” whispered Techelah as the tears began to fall, the grief over losing his rephaim friends was great indeed. “Why them? They had, they had so much to live for, so much waiting for them. Why?”
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A mighty wind has passed, an ashen wind
It was not the Wind we were waiting for
Nor yet again Holy Wisdom’s tongues of fire
But only Babel’s burning ziggurat…
“Mother, Father, Mary, Henry, and the children are all safe and healthy,” Helen thought, counting her blessings. “And I am on my way to live with Aunt Lucy, who is kind, and Uncle Henry, who is a carpenter…”
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While isolated in my rural estate here along Beer Can Road and County Dump Extension I have been dragging hoses, reading Robert Frost, saying bad things about the ‘possums pillaging my vegetable garden, and considering Star Trek…
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