In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard’s Pulitzer Prize winning book (1975), she writes the following: The point of the dragonfly’s terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork–for it doesn’t ….–but that it all flows so freely wild,Continue reading “The Beauty of Complexity”
Category Archives: inspiration/deep thoughts
Stay Curious
“How do you fight cynicism? Stay curious.” This is my third year teaching at a school in the Kansas City area. Each of the past two years we have begun back-to-school teacher training with a sermon from a local pastor, a message reminding us of our duty to mold the children and young men andContinue reading “Stay Curious”
He Knew How to Keep Christmas Well
…and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see theContinue reading “He Knew How to Keep Christmas Well”
“Waiting Is an Art”
“…And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyesContinue reading ““Waiting Is an Art””
“Back to School” Is Not Just for Kids
“The time has come to revive an idea that once seemed natural: the student’s life as a Christian calling.” Dr. Leland Ryken, author and professor, writes this in a chapter that he contributed to Liberal Arts for the Christian Life. For Ryken and many Christian educators (like myself), education is not a season of life meantContinue reading ““Back to School” Is Not Just for Kids”
Yes, You Can!
I really don’t like prosperity preachers (do we remember the private jet fundraising debacle?); the worldview they offer is so hollow and contradictory both to Scripture and basic human experience. The biblical narrative is pretty clear: God made all things perfect, the first humans fell from grace in an attempt to become divine themselves, God beganContinue reading “Yes, You Can!”
November 5th
Bare trees with branches, tentacle-like, grasp. Exposed bark. Leaves cling to a few oaks, green tinged with yellow, orange, brown. There is a difference between being alone and being lonely. God has given us nature to surround us and wrap us like a garment, and I have had only a few moments of electrifying clarityContinue reading “November 5th”
Transcendentalism, Nature, and Concord
About a year and a half ago I remember having what can only be described as a really good day. Now, if those superlatives don’t exactly bowl you over, it’s simply because nothing truly spectacular happened; I was just able to look back at the end of the day and realize how incredibly refreshing itContinue reading “Transcendentalism, Nature, and Concord”
Deep breaths…
It’s a simple playlist, only sixteen songs right now. My thinking music. My deep breathing, deep contemplating music. My centering music. It’s playing in the background right now. I invite you to join in my thoughtful reveries: a pipe and thoughts Every life is a universe. Every step opens new worlds, new realities andContinue reading “Deep breaths…”
Self-Realization
Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves. Zora Neale Hurston’s character, Janie, said this at the end of Their Eyes Were Watching God. This next week is my last before receiving my third degree, this one in literature (the previousContinue reading “Self-Realization”
a great, real place 