For whatever reason, today has been a day of snippets. While at work this morning, I had a number of moments where observations about shame rolled in- and I harvested as many of those as I could for a later post. Tonight, it was about dealing with self. With a rare evening home and...
Read more →Tonight I had an interesting experience, which was a good one, but one I’ve had a number of times before, and every time I have it, it tests me. I went to dance with our dance club friends at a local club for the bulk of the early evening, and then I went with...
Read more →“We who had sweet fellowship together walked in the house of God in the throng.” ~ Psalm 55:14 Tonight, I was honored to have a few friends from church and from my church small group over for dinner. The three have become special friends to me over the last year. Back in early summer...
Read more →Some days feel like a midnight pause at the single signaled intersection in a sleeping Kansas town. Winds swirl around you like a flood of memories while the sky is broad and heavy and roiling and moist and hoarse, and the wheat silently swaying in the surrounding farm fields whispers the names of longings and loves that have moved on through your life, and you realize you’ve been here before- and you’re not sure if you are coming, or going- or if you will ever get on out of this lonesome place.
Tonight, we spent the early part of the evening with Walter, saying goodbye. My sister’s exchange student, Walter departed this evening to head back home to China after spending a school year here in Albuquerque. My brother and his family, my parents, and my sister’s husband’s mother met Walter for dinner at Applebee’s near...
Read more →I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a man over the last year. Sadly, I realize I really hadn’t given this much thought throughout the earlier years of my adult life, and suddenly, now that I am smack in mid-life, I’ve started to ask the question. You know, you get...
Read more →I wrote this up about a month and a half ago. Thinking back over the last few years, and also about the plateau of what’s left of my life before me, I asked myself, “What is really important to me? What does a meaningful life look like when it is done?” It certainly would...
Read more →Today I did something that I rarely (if ever) do, and it was, well, hard. I told an old friend I was disappointed in him. The moment for the acknowledgement began innocently enough. I received an email from him which had a short blurb telling me about a friend he had known from childhood...
Read more →Anne Lamott says that if you want to be a writer, you need to sit down each day, and regardless of whether or not you are crazy or mentally dead or narcissistic, try and write at least a paragraph. Get one paragraph down of something, and let that stand, and aim to do it...
Read more →Tonight after work I ran a few errands to help get the house more ready to receive summer guests, and then when I came home, I decided to make a pot of goulash, and to listen to a podcast by Tom Nelson. Tom Nelson is the pastor of Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas,...
Read more →Anytime I hear a song by Chicago, and specifically from albums 16 or 17, I am carried back to my sophomore and junior years in high school. I think this is in part because both albums had singles in heavy airplay as either new releases or recurrent singles during those years- Chicago was hot...
Read more →For many people, today has probably been a pretty normal (if not a low-key) day outside of a few major news items. Today, disco icon Donna Summers passed away. Tomorrow, Facebook drops its I.P.O. and reaps a whirlwind of capital. Those are the highs and lows of the news day for today, a...
Read more →On Friday morning, our team arose for our last full day in Puerto Rico, and again, we were happy to enjoy the day primarily as tourists. After a cheery breakfast in the facility’s cafeteria which was followed by the morning’s devotion, our group boarded the three vans and under sunny skies set out north...
Read more →On Thursday, our group got to take a break during the day from regular work activities, and enjoy some time playing tourists. It was also a special day for us because two people with us had decided to get baptized when we went to the beach- and today was beach day. After breakfast, we...
Read more →After maintaining decorum by posting notes five nights in a row while in Puerto Rico (6 if you count the day before we left), I ran into a mental block called tiredness and stalled on my up-to-the-day reporting. What follows is my effort to recover my memories of what happened on day 7. Day...
Read more →After maintaining decorum by posting notes five nights in a row (6 if you count the day before we left), I ran into a mental block called tiredness and stalled on my up-to-the-day reporting. What follows is my effort to recover my memories of what happened on day 6. After breakfast and a morning...
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