keepsake there are some nights when the sky turns the color of friendship and fades into the crisp darkness of gratitude friends old and new around our table shared food and stories love and laughter as though there was enough for all we’ve washed the dishes saved the leftovers and turned out the lights except…
Here’s what today looked like: It was a good day. A joyful day. A memory. I am grateful. Peace, Milton
Today marks two months since my mother died. This poem found me today. symbol the old cast iron skillet has soaked up a cookbook of stories, handed down from Grandma to you and then to me. just salt—no soap— to clean it; i run my hand around the side and I feel the soft oil…
I started a new Wendell Berry essay this morning, knowing I didn’t really have the energy to read the whole thing, and he still got me with his opening paragraphs: A sentence of my own, written thirteen years ago, has stayed in my mind. In it, I was speaking of the connection between my work…
The summer between my junior and senior years at Baylor, I lived in Waco, even though I didn’t need to go to summer school, because I had a weekend pastorate at Pecan Grove Baptist Church, which sat on FM 107 between Oglesby and Mound. The church paid me enough to make my rent and do…
Even before I read any of the reports of election-related happenings around the country, I felt depressed, so I am choosing to limit my intake as much as I can. Still, I am troubled. I can remember, after past elections that seemed contentious, but now pale by comparison, hearing people say we were blessed to…
Maybe it’s not exactly the right word, but I was well into my thoughts for tonight when I realized I had already used weather; seasons will have to do. We have had a couple of early spring days here on the Shoreline, and it set me to thinking of songs about wind and rain and…
I come, in conclusion, to the difference between “projecting” the future and making a promise. The “projecting” of “futurologists” uses the future as the safest possible context for whatever is desired; it binds one only to selfish interest. But making a promise binds one to someone else’s future. (Wendell Berry, Standing by Words, 62) promise…
When I was in elementary school and the first part of junior high, we lived in Lusaka, Zambia. One of my clearest memories is of our Sunday after-church ritual: we would come home and have lunch, and then Dad would wash the dishes and Miller and I would dry them. While we worked, we listened…
Towards the end of the day at work it fell my lot to help a woman whose phone was not working as it should. The repair was fairly straight forward and under warranty. That was not the story. Somewhere along the way, she had decided things were not going to go well. By the time…