I was at a conference recently where the meeting was held on a floor several flights of stairs above where we entered the building. All of us attendees climbed the wide, winding stairway, chatting away, turning corner after corner as the stairs wound upward, and all arrived at the designated conference room. The meeting was […]
Letter: Before Sunrise, That First Resurrection Morning
It was the fastest quarter mile ever run in the history of women’s track. And it happened that very first Resurrection morning. Just tenths-of-a-second over 00:45 it still stands. Had Sports Illustrated been published then they’d have made a front cover. Theirs was a miracle, a true-life made-for-TV triumph long, long “before science invaded every […]
Letter: Taking Time to Be
There’s a memorial pool near my wife’s gravesite. A meandering stream of water finds its way over moss covered rocks and drops into the pool causing tremulous reflections on the surface. As a modernist painter might sweep with purposefully erratic and bold strokes of his brush, the vibrancy of daffodils and trees become abstract splashes […]
Letter: Through Fire and Flood
Life is sometimes like going through fire and flood, which is to say, desperate circumstances and grief sometimes, many times, join us as uninvited traveling companions. Our husband leaves, in fact maybe he was not really present even when home. Our wife dies, and though the pleasant memories do indeed come flooding back, so do […]
Letter: Twice Upon a Time
How will your life’s story end? What if, in the admittedly unknown time you have left, you had a wish-come-true opportunity to live life, if not all over again, at least fully, ‘twice upon a time,’ not just once? What would you do differently? Who might you love passionately? How would your new-found life change […]
Letter: The Day I Went Back
It had been one year since she left us. My wife of 50 years, the love and treasure of my life, the mother of our children and grandchildren, was gone. Cancer won. We all lost. In her memory then I climbed. There are two ways up that mountain, one with a view, and one (I […]
Letter: What a Spellbinding Story
What a spellbinding story, a mystery masterpiece, a compelling compendium for the ages! Is it the latest of Stephen King’s suspense-filled, science fiction fantasies? No, more intrigue even than that. Is it an Agatha Christie detective romance investigation? No, still more intricate and imaginative. Dickens or Dostoevsky, Tolkien or Tolstoy, Steinbeck or Shakespeare? All no. […]
God Keeps a Journal, Part III
I first wrote six years ago, March 13, on the subject of God’s musings in heaven as he looks down on earth, pondering. His hand holds a quill, recently dipped in the ink well nearby, and the writing instrument is poised above the journal he keeps. Upon what is he focused? What will he enter […]
Letter: Why We Wander
Perhaps because we’re searching for something we’ve lost. Perhaps because we’re needing somebody we once had. Perhaps we don’t even know. We just go. To fill an irreplaceable heart-shaped hole. To climb alone, one foot in front of the other, resting along the way. And the tears? Innumerable. And the view? Incomparable. And the peace? […]