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Sunbeams

To a brave man, good and bad luck are like his right and left hands. He uses both.

Saint Catherine of Sienna

On The Suffering Of Little Things

Everyday tasks become difficult when one constantly worries about the suffering of little things. There are times when I can’t mow the lawn because there are too many grasshoppers dancing about.

Sunbeams

He had vowed long ago, and renewed his vow frequently, that if holding hands in a circle and singing hymns . . . was what it took to make life endurable, he would rather die.

Annie Dillard

Reconciled

I was laughing at myself, at twenty years of a ministry which had become, without my realizing it, a ministry of liberal sophistication, an attempted negation of Jesus. A ministry of human engineering, of riding on the coattails of Caesar, of playing in his ballpark, by his rules, and with his ball; of looking to government to make and verify and authenticate our morality, of worshiping at the shrine of enlightenment and academia, of making an idol of the Supreme Court; a theology of law and order and of denying, not only the faith I professed to hold, but my history and my people — the Thomas Colemans. For, as much as Jonathan Daniel, they were loved. And if loved, forgiven. And if forgiven, reconciled.

May 2000

I want to live like a man who knows he’s going to die and knows that everyone he loves is going to die, yet remembers that life is an unfathomable mystery that neither birth nor death explains.

Sunbeams

If one is going to change things, one has to make a fuss and catch the eye of the world.

Elizabeth Janeway

April 2000

When I’ve fallen under the spell, when I’m convinced that God doesn’t exist, that love is an illusion, how do I remind myself I’m profoundly mistaken — not just a little wrong, but as wrong as I can be? As wrong as Rush Limbaugh. As wrong as the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.

Being Alone

March 2000

I’m living inside the folds of a living planet, held by its gravity, wrapped in its atmosphere, breathing in and breathing out. How can I forget this? No, I don’t like rainy days. Still, I can praise the rain.

Practicing Love

We are walking in a ticker-tape parade. That’s all that’s going on. Some pieces of confetti read “great calves,” some “chronic sinus,” some “no noticeable hair loss,” some “multiple sclerosis,” and some “third-finger amputation.” Don’t judge your neighbor by what pieces of paper fall on his or her shoulders. Don’t think you are cursed or blessed by what pieces fall on yours.