Nature Notes
What are my Nature Notes? When I send friends, family and a few others emails about new posts on Given Word Now, I usually…
Places 06: Friends
Writing can be a break from pressures—like reading a good book or watching a light movie. Revising this autobiographical poem about my first date in 1952 was a pleasant faith-building diversion from pressures and stress. I hope you can travel back in time and relate to bits of it with me. The line lengths support reading aloud. The meaning? Honestly, I’m not sure—
Essays in Ephesians #9
This Essay on Ephesians 2:1-3 is more lively than most because I share a few personal eye-opening encounters with the “prince of the power of the air.” It’s long, but alive. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of […]
A Living Witness to Love
An agnostic friend recently asked me, “Why do you want me to change? Why do you care what I believe?”
Charlie and Sheila
A light breeze wrapped us in the newness of spring; the warm sun cast leafy kaleidoscopic patterns upon the ground. I was out for an afternoon walk, pushing my twenty-month old daughter Annie in her blue canvas stroller, joined to the play of light and shadows, soaking in a perfect day—until the thought came again to go there. I didn’t want to go there; to spoil the tranquility; to interrupt our walk.
Hot and Cold
Dense clouds have dropped down, hugging the earth with a thick haze. In yesterday’s sunshine, autumn’s tall dry grasses waved above the snow warming the whiteness of winter with hints of tawny gold. Today, all color is muted. The edges of familiar tree-bark-browns fade away; treetops dissolve into fog. It looks as if a paintbrush has […]
The Nursing Home
Occasionally a little faith-talk or a short prayer with these elderly residents who’d faithfully said their prayers since childhood happened automatically. Sometimes they’d initiate a spiritual moment; sometimes a word of blessing would slip from my lips. Often, as the night aide, I was the last person a resident saw before sleep.
Christmas 2015
2015 has been a good year—filled with joys both familiar and unforeseen. Outside our window we’ve heard the calls of sand hill cranes, the chorus of frogs, and the wind moving through the nearby oaks and hickories;
Three Rifles
We used to keep a gun, hidden and unloaded. The shells were separate, in an unlikely spot under scraps of fabric in a sewing closet. In our rural township guns are tools, just like kitchen knives and garden spades. When they’re needed, they’re needed. So we guarded that gun and shells—for emergencies.
