fear:

The great cave of the soul where we often cower and hide...it hates the light and would rather sleep in the foul air of deception than rest in the open expanse of humiliation and freedom...it holds the danger of a wound that never heals.

peace:

The manifestation of goodness. The fruit of a pruned orchard.

Augustine

"Prayer is the affectionate reaching out of the mind for God...In prayer, it is not always a good thing to be heard according to our desires, but it is very important that we be heard to our advantage."

guilt:

A cousin of shame...it can be false...it chaffs the soul - too much friction...it can turn into an unbearable heat...it can paralyze...when met by grace it shrinks. It is a fungus that lives in the dark wood of memory.

death:

It is difficult to write about death without considering life; it begs for a comparison. It stands in contrast. The reality of it has a direct impact on the fact that we live. It begins when we take our first breath. This great semi-colon - that marker revealing a continuation of thought yet a sentence on its own standing.

home:

It is the people more than the place. It is the open hand then interlocking fingers and the sway of arms while walking together. It is the decision to love.

Louis L'Amour

"A great book begins with an idea; a great life, with a determination."

sorrow:

The great barrier grief...The daily liturgy of humanity...The nucleus of every cell...The unifier of nature's existence.

rural:

Open and inviting...quiet and clam...The place where one builds his cottage and writes with a cut quill and dipped ink and little is known of excess and words are kept in small tins hidden in the cupboard of life only to be spent on rare occasions.

Helmut Thielicke

"The Christian stands, not under the dictatorship of a legalistic 'You Ought', but in the magnetic field of Christian freedom, under the empowering of the 'You May'."

distance:

Requires time and speed. The space between there and here - the dash on a tombstone.

weeds:

A Trojan horse of the soul whose hidden roots are discovered too late. Representation of oppression...so many varieties.

time:

Delicate like the aged or the child's hand - both old and new at once: a newspaper article and the ancient wood it is written upon.

Segmented like the sand of the seashore and yet as a collective whole it offers the beauty of a beach.

The dust of a moment becomes a raindrop, becomes a puddle, becomes a creek, becomes a river: collecting and moving and always increasing...

Martin Luther

"A theologian is born by living, nay dying and being damned, not by thinking, reading, or speculating."

dirt:

Garden trowel in hand, I break open the crypt to uncover the rich treasure hold of a fertile harvest. Hands stained with the toil of excavation. The work of civilization.

rain:

It falls like thought - at times in a mist...at times in a thunderous rush.

C.S. Lewis

[Lewis writing on an experience in church]

"I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it...I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit."

children:

Imagination...small...playful...adaptable...the poor among me...Filled with trust and questions...easily damaged thus they need great care...Time has not yet consumed them - they dwell in the eternal now. I remember the Christmas as a child when I got my first watch and Father Time began to replace Father Christmas.

anxiety:

Barbed wire coiled atop the fence that surrounds and jails my soul.

quiet:

The sound of subtleness...It can be seen, felt, heard...It is kind and gentle but can also haunt...It is the sound of the songbird heard through the closed window...It is the footfall of the convict who lives within our hearts...It is breath...It is the depths of the ocean...It is the sound of light...

Billy Graham

"As long as there is one man who should be free, as long as slums and ghettos exist, as long as any person goes to bed hungry at night, as long as the color of a man's skin is his prison, there must be divine discontent. We Christians have no right to be content until the principles of Christ are applied to all men."

beauty:

How does one describe it? Herein lies the challenge, for beauty might be in the eye of the beholder but what does it look like in words? So I ask, "What is the most beautiful word in the English language?" As of right now, I keep coming back to the word warmth. Although the "ar" blend is fairly harsh I love how the word restores war.

So, what say you is the most beautiful word?

nine:

My eldest son's age today...the last of the single digits. Nine is the lizard sunning himself on a hot rock, soaking up life and then skittering through each day with such firm quickness that nothing can catch up.

Thoreau

"The world is a place of business. What infinite bustle! I am awakened almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no Sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work."

From The Atlantic Monthly, 1863 in an essay entitled "Life Without Principle"

Bernard of Clairvaux

"True love is precisely this: that is does not seek it's own interests...Love is a natural human affection. It comes from God. Hence the first and greatest commandment is, "thou shalt love the Lord thy God." But human nature is weak and therefore compelled to love itself and serve itself first. In the human realm people love themselves for their own sake. This is planted within us for who ever hated his own self?

But if this love of ourselves becomes too lavish, it will overflow its natural boundaries through excessive love of pleasure. People can easily become slaves to the soul's enemy: lust. This love of self is held in check by the command to love our neighbor. If we cannot love our neighbor because of our love of self, then we must restrain our lusts and give to our neighbor's needs. Your love will then be temperate when you take from yourself and give to your neighbor.

But what will you do if your own needs are not met? Will you look to God to meet your needs? God promises that those who seek first the kingdom and his righteousness will have all things added unto them. God promises that to those who restrict themselves and give to their neighbor, he will give whatever is necessary. Seeking first the kingdom means to prepare to bear the yoke of modesty and restraint rather than allow sin to reign in your mortal body...God must be loved first in order that we may love our neighbor in God."

From On The Love Of God

quotidian:

the everyday and mundane...common as thought...it is the food to hand to mouth to belly, the this to then from then to now...