Category: Uncategorized
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Three Rooms
When I took violin lessons I learned more about life than I did about the violin. My teacher said that I must learn to focus, concentrate, and relax, simultaneously. I argued that concentrating and relaxing were mutually exclusive. She answered, “Nevertheless, you must achieve this, or you will never play the violin.” As she was…
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Fresh Air
Once when I was sitting on a bench in a nearby park I met a young man from Bosnia. He was accompanying his two nephews who were playing nearby. He had immigrated after the Bosnian war and spoke very clear English. He told me that, though the park wasn’t really like his home, it reminded…
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A Tense Forty Days
For forty days Israel and her enemy the Philistines were at a stalemate, the two armies facing each other across a valley with a stream running through it. Aggressive arrogance on one side met fear and trepidation across the valley. It was a forty day stand-still that was close to erupting when young David approached…
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A Forty Day Journey
“I have had enough, Lord,” he (Elijah) said. “Take my life, I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under a bush and fell asleep. All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” He looked around and there by his head was some bread baked over hot…
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Forty Rainy Days
Type Forty Rainy Days “Aslan, said Lucy, “you’re bigger.” “That is because you are older, little one,” answered he. “Not because you are?” “I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.” ( Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis.) I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you…
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Forty Years
In his “Confessions” St Augustine mulled over the meaning of time and eternity. He passionately desired to discern their meanings. Augustine believed, as did everyone in his era, that the sun rotates around the earth. For a while he judged that time could be measured by the duration of the sun’s journey from east to…
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Forty Days
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the forty days of Lent when we tighten our hold on the hand of God, and loosen it on the hand of worldly cares and our private demons. There are several “forties” in the Bible, among them the forty days and nights of Moses on mount Sinai receiving…
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Artist of Icicles
My high school art teacher was passionate about “modern” art. Nature, he declared, was the raw material of art, but never art itself. Art required creativity, imagination and intelligence, none of which, he asserted, exist in nature. Even then I wondered how that could be true. On Friday when I stepped outside I saw on…
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Nephilim
One of the most heart breaking stories in the Old Testament is the return of the spies from the Promised Land, and the general decision by the people not to attempt to enter the land: The land we explored devours those living in it. The people we saw there were of great size. We saw…
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Watching Birds
Once I had a neighbor who every fall stretched a line on a pulley from a tree near his house to the frame of the window of his study. At first he hung a bird feeder near the tree, and gradually, over a few weeks, pulled the feeder closer and closer to the window. “The…
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