All Human Stories

Perhaps it was from thinking about him after his death, discovering how much I remembered and how little I knew, that I learned that all human stories in this world contain many lost or unwritten or unreadable or unwritable pages and that the truth about us, though it may exist, though it must lie all [...]

9.11.01.

What comes from silence

I’ve been avoiding silence recently. Oh, perhaps I haven’t had my iPod blasting full blast, or a movie on, or television, etc., but I’ve drowned out silence with incessant internet surfing, or talking, or something, anything really to prevent silence. This is odd. I used to crave silence, and something in me still does. I [...]

Paradigm shift, identity crisis, etc.

I am a follower of the Man who walked the shores of Galilee and bid people to come and follow him. As I do my best to follow him, I reflect on what that call means in my context, perched here on the top of a hill in just outside the burby-burbs (does that make [...]

Contentment in a Culture of Consumerism

My upstairs neighbor decided to have a mid-afternoon James Brown marathon today.  I could only tell that it was James Brown after going outside, all I could hear inside my apartment was the bass.  So I decided to sit on the deck and pretend I was at a cafe with no control over the music, [...]

Faithfulness, not success.

Well, I am back from my many trips in November to California for brother’s engagement party and friend’s ordination, Atlanta for the National Youth Worker’s Convention, and then Asheville for Thanksgiving with the in-laws. Much fun, but too many night without my bed! I thought I’d share something I was musing on… It struck me [...]

Eternity in disguise

I’ve been reading The Sabbath, by Abraham Joshua Heschel, a book which I’ve owned for several years and have yet to actually read. He starts out with a sort of polarization of time and space, saying: Technical civilization is man’s conquest of space. It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of [...]

Writing resistance…

Just came across this post (thanks to Maggie Dawn) at Magpie Girl, where she perfectly describes the weird phenomenon that seems to accompany trying to actually write with a deadline. Still, I have, in fact, had a little time to write….and I have, in fact, not done so. Oh, to be sure, I’ve done writing-like [...]

Free books!

Since we moved from a 1400 square foot house into a 998 square foot apartment, we’ve been struck with the need to scale down our possession and, bibliophiles that we are, a lot of what can be down-sized is our books. A friend of ours once said that there comes a time with books when [...]

Mongolian BBQ and the “give-me-more” culture

Jody and I went out for Mongolian BBQ tonight, trying out a new chain restaurant that is exclusively for Mongolian BBQ. They seated us and presented us with menus of recommended bowl mixes and small metal bowls for our raw ingredients. Then we got up and started through the buffet line of ingredients. First came [...]