Five Minute Friday: Refrain Refrain: The part of the song or poem that is emphasized or repeated. The chorus. In other words, the part you remember. The part that gets stuck in your head. Refrains are powerful. Consider the songs from your childhood that you still know: “Yes, Jesus loves me, yes, Jesus loves me … Continue reading Refrain
Thank you, dear Noelle, for the inspiration for this post. No one notices her slipping into the crowd, but she is used to that. She prefers anonymity. She would rather live alone in the shadows than endure the stares, the whispers, the pity. She may have been beautiful. Now, she doesn’t know. There is … Continue reading Daughter
Mark 5:1-20 Part I He lives among the dead. Naked, crazed, violent, desperate, driven. He’s the crazy one, not right in the head. His people do not know what to do with him, so it is a relief when he flees to the tombs and stays there, tormented and alone. Forgotten. Who knows how he had come … Continue reading What to do when all your pigs die
Five Minute Friday: Perspective What the soldiers see: A giant of a man, ten feet of confidence and swagger. Bronze-covered muscles swinging his beam of a spear. He craves blood; he is soaked with the blood of his enemies. His mocking jeers ring mighty through the air. Always he challenges, and always he prevails. … Continue reading Perspective
We are natural collectors of things, we humans. We like to compile and stockpile, to assemble and amass. I collect old books, mainly classics of literature. I love the look of them and the thought of surrounding myself with ancient words of wisdom. My great-aunt once collected cats on her large Texas estate. Rumor has … Continue reading What are you collecting?
Five Minute Friday: Patient This post isn't really about patience, it's about Good Friday and my reflections from my reading this morning. But how patient is our God to continue to love, accept, and forgive us, even when we are as blind and pious as those who killed him. May we all be on our … Continue reading Good men on Friday
Five Minute Friday (five minutes of writing on “Now”) TODAY: There are hungers waiting to be fed, Words ready to be spoken, Foods asking to be consumed, Garments waiting to be put on, Voices longing to be listened to, Truths waiting to be taken up or rejected, Lies hoping to pounce, Masters eager to … Continue reading Today
night-sung starlight twinkling time-traveling troupe playing out the same celestial story, sure as the sun a God-friend gazing upward, holding a holy pledge, a knife raised, a voice a boy untied, a birthright thief running for his life met by night angels arms raised lifting a promise waves heeding, holding mighty heads to … Continue reading Things I Know to Be True
I have been hearing them all winter. In the early morning, their howls and yips ring out through the quiet forest as they call to one another. I always stop to listen, enjoying the sound of the coyotes talking to each another in their strange canine language, grateful to live so close to the wildness … Continue reading On coyotes and quarantine
Transitive The thing is unsatisfactory. Something still is not quite right. So I will keep smoothing, spinning, shaping. And maybe, in the end, I will collapse, press in, put the whole mess back into a form in which I can begin again, deftly forming, patient until the beauty of my intention takes hold. Intransitive … Continue reading Adjust: a verb (Five Minute Friday)
