E-Letter 165
Every year, it seems, Thomas the Twin, one of Jesus’ disciples, gets a bad rap the second Sunday of Easter. Every year, it seems, we Christians focus on Thomas’ doubt, his deep, heart-wrenching questions about the events of Golgotha. Behind his back we shake our heads and tsk-tsk even though, deep in our hearts, we suspect we might have joined him in his desperate solitude those hours after the crucifixion. Although all of us at one time or another have felt abandoned and bereft, alone in a dark room as waves of doubt wash over us, it is not a place or a posture we seek. However,...
Read MoreE-Letter 164
A helter skelter wind careened down the street, twisting and turning the stoplight as if it were a toy and forcing the high school students to run to their buses for cover. In the center of the schoolyard, a lone student huddled under the branches of a large Bradford pear tree, its branches waving furiously, arrhythmically, showering the manicured lawn with white blossoms shorn prematurely from the source of their life. The student, caught in an unexpected whirlwind of whiteness, looked up, and I wondered, “Does he hear the groans and notice the tears of an arboreal witness?” In a hurry to...
Read MoreE-Letter 163
A waterfall of pale purple wisteria cascades from the line of tall, hardwood trees marking the boundary between fields. I catch my breath at the sight of this delicate, flowering Lenten offering flung capriciously and with abandon across a barren landscape by the twirling Creator God who delights in surprising us with unanticipated gifts of beauty. Curious about this draping flower, I discovered that the largest plant, growing since 1894, may be found in Sierra Madre, California, where it covers more than an acre of land and weighs more than 250 tons! Imagine my disappointment to discover...
Read MoreE-Letter 162
The dark of night lifts slowly this morning, its business unfinished, its mourning so raw, so ragged, that it leaves the usual avian chorus gasping for song. There are no trills, no lighthearted warblings, no joyous descants filling the dawn sky. Instead, the somber, haunting, full-throated cooing of a dusty brown dove accompanies the reluctant opening of the envelope of this day. It is as if all of creation marks the tragic events of yesterday in a moment of silence before saluting the fallen military men and women stationed at Ft. Hood, victims of a fellow soldier whose life as he knew it...
Read MoreE-Letter 161
I watched the pack of shirtless runners glide by the crumpled purple cloths wrapped around some scrub pines lining the freeway. All eyes of this sweaty fraternity of high school track athletes looked straight ahead, focused on the path of their practice run. No one so much as gave the purple cloths a glannce, nor, for that matter, the compact hedge of purple violets lining the street like a rundown strip mall. I angled my car into the church parking lot, jumped out, and crossed the busy street to retrieve the cloths. A blustery morning wind had swept the cloths from the display of three...
Read MoreE-Letter 160
E-Letter 160 March 20 I hear his song before I see him…a familiar avian friend and melodious junkyard bird, the church mockingbird. Last year he and his wife were “evicted” from their summer home in the Japanese maple tree outside my office window by a crazed cardinal who spent most of the year divebombing my window, glazing it with feather oil and shadows of blood. With spring just a promise away, this long-tailed, flighty, gray and white friend stakes out his territory early, filling the air with his beware ! pheromones and throaty warning, “This tree is my tree!” His mate safely esconced...
Read More