Spring break has been rocking in our backyard. The music has been gloriously loud, so much chatter that I don’t mind being an observer instead of a participant. Just listen to the audio file above while you read. Robins dominate the crowd in number, but cardinals and other small songbirds chime in above the hubbub. …
The first week of December is nearly past, and I’ve changed my mind three times about which Advent devotion to use for Christmas. Why am I dragging my feet? I can’t connect the babe in the itchy hay to the man who faced death with composure. God entered human life as the rest of us …
Should I or Shouldn’t I? My sister-in-law had planned the menus, pre-marinated, pre-cut, and prepared the food. My brother navigated our paths down dirt roads criss-crossing the brush to fishing ponds and sunset watching locations. My only decision was choosing between boots and athletic shoes. That was the extent of pressure weighing me for 42 …
LORD of Birds and Questions On my morning walk in the neighborhood, I head south on Oceola Avenue and the sun burns like a campfire on my left cheek. The low elevation of this street prevents development on three contiguous lots, so grasses sweep down from the road to the bayou, framing an inspiring view. …
A tropical storm is simmering in the Caribbean Ocean, and its forecast track edges westward then eastward but always northward, where I sit at my keyboard. The thought of a hurricane electrifies my mood. On one hand, it’s exciting to anticipate the power that can blow down an oak tree with a girth larger than …
I gazed over my steering wheel through swirling snow at an empty road. What a lonely stretch for my car to conk out on. A bridge bisected the highway between my growling stomach and an inn a mile ahead where a hot meal and roaring fire awaited. Last year, another traveller in a similar situation …
The air conditioner kicked on as I wound the vacuum cord back into place, but the house was otherwise ominously quiet. Curious, I poked my head around the door frame into one of the boy’s rooms. No one there. I checked across the hall in the other bedroom. No five year old in there either. …
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what it would feel like to hold hands with God, not metaphorically, but literally. Jesus grabbed Peter’s hand when he was sinking under water. Can’t you see Jesus’ grip with angled bones, muscles and tendons straining to pull his friend out of the dark deep into the boat? …
Do you remember playing hide and seek when you were a kid? We played it at night and called it murder-in-the-dark. All the neighborhood kids gang in our yard, milling around and doing cartwheels until someone yells, “Not it.” The last kid to say, “Not it,” becomes “it” or the seeker. The first person the …
I discussed fetal hearing with a Safe Harbor client. The curriculum includes an exercise where the mother plays different kinds of music from a phone or other device that she places on her swelling abdomen. The mom laughed when she told me that her baby likes music with a beat! Her baby rolled over, kicked …