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Put up a Lightning Rod
Not long ago during a thunderstorm, my husband showed me a weather map App that displayed the lightning strikes in our area. Amazing and somewhat frightening too. And I thought, Wouldn’t it be something if you and I could see when spiritual lightning strikes a soul? Like moments when a person actually feels the presence of God, or when they experience conviction for sin, or in a situation where God displays his power to rescue someone, or times God gives peace in the midst of a crisis when there is no peace. Wouldn’t you and I be dismayed? It’s those astonishing instances when God breaks through the atmosphere of self-protection…
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Eclipse: to block out, obscure, or conceal
My daughter and her husband took their kids on a two hour drive to Midland to see The Ring of Fire Eclipse on Saturday, October 14, 2023. I hadn’t paid attention to this solar eclipse, even though the path for viewing was nearby. But then I started thinking about my mom, Carly Simon, and Annie Dillard. Annie Dillard Annie Dillard wrote an essay titled, “Total Eclipse,”[1] which was published in The Atlantic in 1982 and later included in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk. Her experience took place on February 26, 1979 when she and her husband drove from the Washington coast to central Washington. Early the next morning…
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Some People Never Learn
And that’s a shame. A tragedy. A waste. Some people keep repeating the same mistakes. I used to think the red-pencil marks on papers judged me. Me as a person. A failing grade amounted to failure. The red flags waved, “Why didn’t you know the answer to that question?” (Ignore all the questions you got right.) Education establishes a model where learning takes place in a particular context that includes tests over the material taught. But the real tests of what we learn take place in life beyond the classroom. A Recent Test At the first season performance of the Symphony at the Buddy Holly Hall, a woman seated near…
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A Very Small Stage
Dear Footnotes Readers, Unofficially and unannounced and unexplained, I took the month of July off from writing a weekly blog. I understand that a lot of blog writers take off all or part of the summer. I failed to announce a break and I apologize for not letting you know. In the meantime, I have been putting together an ebook, editing a memoir manuscript that is starting to grow fur like the fungus on mushrooms, and gone back and forth to our little cabin in the woods of Southeastern Colorado, with a grandson’s wedding in-between. Miles and smiles and more than a few dilemmas, as even in summer, daily life…
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Good Friday: Did Jesus Have to Die?
After Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1–44), the die was cast. The Rubicon crossed. No turning back. The Jewish religious leaders gathered, devising the plot to kill Jesus. Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did [raised Lazarus], believed in him, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who…
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A Response to Evil
Life disrupted all across America as people reacted to this week’s shooting in Nashville. Meanwhile, life irrevocably changed for the families of the victims of evil. You and I Must Call Evil by Its Name The Bible does not sugar-coat evil or resort to euphemisms when it describes the evil that exists in the heart of man. In fact, the Bible goes so far as to show how anyone is capable of evil because you and I live in a fallen world. When Evil rears its ugly head, people look for reasons to blame someone or something. In any case, no, no not one of us is right about everything,…
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Jayber Crow: The Value of a Small Life
Intrigued by the words “the value of a small life,” which I heard on a podcast in January, those words refer to this book. Jayber Crow : The Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber of Port William Membership, as Written by Himself (published 2000) is actually a novel written by Wendell Berry as if it is a memoir written by the character the author created. Timely and timeless, Jayber’s story transported me to an unfamiliar setting, a bygone time, and describes people I know. Including myself. An excerpt: “If you could do it, I suppose it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line––starting say,…
