Category: Personal
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a work of GENIUS
When P.G. Wodehouse, possibly the best comic writer who ever lived, had his first novel published, he sent a copy to his friend Bill Townend with these words inscribed: To Villiam Townend these first-fruits of a GENIUS at which the WORLD will (shortly) be AMAZED (You see if it won’t) from the author Sep 28.…
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thoughts on “Being the Body”
I just finished reading Being the Body by Charles Colson and Ellen Vaughn. A friend lent it to me months ago, but during the school year I don’t get much chance to read. Anyway, the book’s central theme is the Church in its worldwide (“the church universal”) and local (“the church particular”) incarnations. Colson presents…
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Tales from an Irish Hermitage
A few months ago, I was contacted by a nun in Ireland. She was trying to self-publish a book and wondered if I could give her any advice on formatting. I already knew her through an online community and had enjoyed her writing very much, so since I had a few weeks of vacation ahead…
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small ones
Four years ago, on a beautiful night in late June, my sister Tabithah was born. (I assume it was a beautiful night. Chances are it was humid and very warm, but I know it was green, and it wasn’t raining. In any case, the event made it beautiful.) I was twenty years old. Taba and…
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It’s All About the Words
Taking a quick break from work… I work with words for seven or eight hours every day. I read them, I write them, I correct them. They never cease to amaze me. The fact that we can string 26 letters together and communicate worlds with them, across centuries and cultural boundary lines, that we can…
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March
We like March, his shoes are purple, He is new and high;Makes he mud for dog and peddler, Makes he forest dry;Knows the adder’s tongue his coming, And begets her spot.Stands the sun so close and mighty That our minds are hot.News is he of all the others; Bold it were to dieWith the blue-birds…
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see how it glistens
What do you do when your cousin calls you up at quarter to ten at night and asks you to pull yourself out from under the blankets and tea and laptop you’re curled up with and venture into the frigid night to go sledding? Mind you, by “sledding” I mean throwing yourself onto a slick…
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from the mouths of three year olds
“Oh, that’s so cute,” Tabithah tells me… “… I wish I had one of those.” “I wish this whooooole house was mine,” Tab says, her face a centimeter away from mine. “Even your room.” “What would you do with it all?” I ask her. “I would have forty beds, probably,” she answers. “What would you…
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happy birthday, Robbie Burns!
But tent me, Davie, Ace o’ Hearts!(To say aught less wad wrang the cartes, And flatt’ry I detest)This life has joys for you and I;And joys that riches ne’er could buy; And joy’s the very best.There’s a’ the Pleasures o’ the Heart, The Lover an’ the Frien’;Ye hae your Meg, your dearest part, And I…
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every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end
It’s been a full, good year. Full of life, though death has touched us more than once. Full of love, though there have been frustrations and misunderstandings and times of getting off course. Full of God… always full of God. One of my “discoveries” this year has been the work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, so…