just enough light

I have always admired my dad’s hands. They seem a little large for his body, they have visible tendons running to each finger and a network of veins going in all directions. They are strong. When he and I participated in a zoom meeting to assess him for his long-term healthcare insurance, the representative asked […]

Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis are the two most vocal Republican governors who have declared war on “woke education.” Kevin McCarthy says that the nation can save lots of money by getting rid of wokeness in the military. He promises congressional investigations into how a woke agenda is making our military weaker. I guess being […]

I learned to drive a stick shift with my best friend, Randy, on a Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1965. His dad’s ’53 Chevy had a push button starter, a three-speed manual transmission (“three on the tree”), and a weak battery. It was a spare car from Randy’s grandmother who no longer drove. The […]

In two recent opinion articles in the Reporter News, the authors complained about the general state of affairs in our country. One writer (March 3) suggested that immorality and the decline in religious belief were undermining our democracy. He included a list of things he considered immoralities.The other author (March 17) included a laundry list […]

I have been in Urbana, IL for the past week. I came on my own and Judy stayed in Abilene to hold down the fort. In my absence she has had to manage a developing crisis of our water heater that is showing all the signs of old age and need for replacement (leaking.) I […]

I went to visit a man who had visited our church. That was something we did in that Baptist church in the 70s, pay a visit to whomever comes to visit us, to see if they want to join or if we can be of service to them in some way. I was a young, […]

For me, gratitude and grief often go together. This morning provided me with an example. As I engaged in my morning time of reading and writing, a sporadic activity I loosely call “a discipline,” the reading admonished me to “assume my creativity is of critical importance.” Only with that assumption will I take it seriously […]

I took a few minutes Sunday morning to be still and to consider what I might focus on with my time and my writing this week. I asked myself, “What is Lent about for me?” An answer came quickly, gratitude and grief. The answer was so natural and spontaneous, it seemed it was simply waiting […]

Frustration, that systemic discontent with my life, is a vague thing. Rarely can I identify the source of my frustration, and when I can, it’s trivial: it’s too noisy to get anything done, I don’t have enough time to get started on that, I have too many things on today’s to-do list, I don’t think […]

“Nothing is quite right, though, if we were forced to admit it, nothing is really wrong either.” Well, that little statement by Joan Chittister pretty much sums up most of my waking hours. Chittister is writing about frustration. I don’t know if frustration is a uniquely human experience, but even if other animals share this […]