A Word About Citizenship My dad’s not around, now. He’s spending the rest of eternity in heaven with Jesus. He died a few years ago, but invariably around the week of the 4th of July, I think about him, and what a true patriot he was. He grew up in the hills of the…
A Word About Fiction Early on in my writing career, my wife started a lovely collection for me. Each time I published a new book, she would buy me one of those framed old-fashioned-looking portraits of some famous author to hang on the wall of my office. I’ve been writing for several years now,…
A Word About Noise We live in an excessively noisy world. One dictionary says a noise is “a sound, especially one that is loud or unpleasant or that causes disturbance.” But I think that dictionary is wrong. I somehow don’t think a noise is the same thing as a sound. Most of the time,…
A Word About Flashbang Like most Americans, I would guess, I’ve been watching the news lately. The disruptive crowds of obviously angry people. Stopping traffic. Waving flags of various countries. Holding up signs with slogans people hope other people will read and be affected by. And when night comes, the crowds become even more…
A Word About Rescue I don’t know how many times in my life I’ve needed to be rescued? Once, when I was about 11 or 12, I was swimmin’ in a creek, and got my arm stuck in a root wad below the surface of the water. I’d have drowned, for sure, if my…
A Word About Shame The other day, I came home and one of our little dogs — Finley — had found a piece of cardboard somewhere, and tore it into tiny pieces all over the living room floor. What a mess! He looked somewhat pleased with himself, until I started scolding him….
A Word About Unseen I’ve been thinking lately about what it feels like to be… unseen. Not ignored, exactly. Not rejected. Just kind of … invisible. Maybe you’ve had that kind of day, or season in your life, too. It may feel like the world is moving faster than you are. The noise of…
A Word About Capitulation Sometimes, I have the hardest time keeping things straight—what I let myself believe, where I allow my focus to drift, what voices I listen to that may be trying to navigate and narrate the story of my life. This past week, someone close to me said something that helped redirect…
A Word About Tattoos My wife recently spent several weeks in a skilled nursing facility, due to a fall she had. And there were so many wonderful nurses and other attendants who helped in her care. One of the nurses had a large tattoo on her left arm that I noticed one day while…
A word about,… Gratitude I wonder? I do wonder, like most people, I suppose, about a lot of things. But today, I wonder about how different things would be for me, if … If I lived a truly grateful life? What would it mean to the way I think, the way I act, the way I live, if every…