Wednesday, February 29th. The 8th day of Lent. I heard Ian Cron read from his memoir last year at Laity Lodge. He described a mystical experience he had on a Saturday morning when he was ten years old. He was riding his bicycle along a street lined with trees waving in a blue sky. Suddenly he…
Tuesday, February 28th. The 7th day of Lent. This post is a follow up to some things I wrote about on Saturday. If the mythic framework of your childhood world no longer satisfies, you can hit the highway and seek your metaphysical fortune in the wide world. These days, with the internet and global news,…
Monday, February 27th. The 6th day of Lent. There was this moment in 2009 when I knew for sure that I had to get out of the ministry. It was on a Wednesday night and a woman came up to me and told me there was a problem with a door knob on one of…
Sunday, February 26th. The first Sunday of lent. A very literal translation of Mark 1:12-13, part of today’s gospel text: “And immediately the Spirit cast him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by the satan. And he was with the wild animals. And the angels waited on…
Saturday, February 25th. The fourth day of Lent. Rules for Living #29: Never Scoff at a True Believer A true believer is culturally unconscious. They are completely at peace with Mother Culture because they are unaware of her existence. They live in her womb, being nurtured by her, participating fully in her stories, and contributing…
I will not get to the mountains. I’ve been told as much, but you can’t swallow this kind of knowledge until you have some perspective. I am in the center of a great salt flat. I don’t know how I got here, but I’ve been walking for 50 years. Behind me I see my tracks.…
Amazing grace how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found Was blind but now I see. When I was a boy resting in the bosom of my people, we spoke of the lost and of the found. Lost people were those who didn’t have faith…
Her body was ancient when this age began. And before her embodiment she was whispered from one savage ear to the next. She has suckled countless human generations, her stories the first they heard and her words their last benediction. She is older than human memory. No one knows her story.
Not everything I write for the High Calling is appropriate for the Squid. But I think maybe this piece is. In a documentary I recently saw, an Inuit child was happily romping around inside her family’s igloo. The interior temperature was just a tad above 32 degrees. She was naked. Human beings can adapt to…