Monthly Archives: May 2008

I don’t profess to have anything other than an evil nature. Truly. Without the love and constant direction of my sweet Lord, I could rival Attila the Hun. Some days I see him in my reflection. But I just can’t abide by rudeness. It amazes me the intensity of rudeness when there’s a degree of separation: on the phone, in the car, in email. These same people would chagrin a deep scarlet rather than have these same encounters face to face. It’s as if these modes of communication or travel provide some bubble of insulation from the feelings of others. …

I remember the first time that I really understood that God talked to Moses. Until I read the bible first-hand *, I thought the burning bush–so nicely depicted by Cecil B. deMille–was the extent of God’s conversation with Moses. I expected the subsequent messages to be more like an unspoken whisper, or a tug of conscience. But God spoke with Moses. Directly. Routinely. As He would to a friend. When the Hebrews wandered the desert for forty years, due to their sin, God led them in the daytime by a pillar of cloud and at night by a pillar of …

Another hero was in the newspaper today, if you’re a fan of the Kennedy family. For those alive during his brother’s presidency, Ted Kennedy promised another knight seated ’round the table at Camelot. But John was assassinated, then Bobby. We watched both events on TV. The nation held a collective breath for Ted’s safety. In spite of his subsequent run for the Democratic nomination, he ended his own bid for the presidency in 1969, the night he ran his mother’s Olds Delmont 88 off a bridge into Poucha Pond near Chappaquiddick Island. The car overturned and Mary Jo Kopechne drowned. …

I’ve read a lot of books about frontier life and the rugged men and women who risked indignant natives, ferocious animals, and brutal terrain to hammer and tong out a better life. They owned nothing but what they built, traded for, or grew out of the stingy soil. Their homes were one-room and one temperature: hot in the summer and cold in the winter. They fought off mama bears.