Month: December 2012

  • Getting Mama Ready

    Getting Mama Ready

      In 1966, when we got word of my father’s death, it was my brother’s crying that frightened me most. The way he beat at the wall and yelled about the men he would grow up and kill one day.  Mama had worried that her[..]
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  • A Good Mama is Hard to Lose

    A Good Mama is Hard to Lose

    [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="206"] Shelby Jean Mayes Spears, Rogersville, TN[/caption]     Shelby Jean Mayes Spears, 75, died after a brief bout of cancer at her son’s home in Auburn, WA. on December 26, 2012. Born on January 23, 1937, to John Harve Mayes and[..]
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  • The Gift of Christmas

    The Gift of Christmas

      The men are all gathered around the TV. Daughter Shelby is hanging out with friends she hasn’t seen since high school graduation, ten years ago. Konnie is in the kitchen preparing treats for a Christmas Eve gathering. Grandson Sullivan and his parents are visiting[..]
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  • I Live With Adam Lanza

    I Live With Adam Lanza

      Editor’s note: The following essay was written by someone who wanted their privacy protected because of the issues they address. Anonymous White Male is the name they gave themselves.  By Anonymous White Male My friend and roommate very easily could have been Adam Lanza.[..]
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  • Shaming God: Embarrassing Evangelicals

    Shaming God: Embarrassing Evangelicals

      Sometimes it is downright embarrassing to be an evangelical. Oh, I’m not the least bit afraid to speak the name of Jesus, or to tell others that I’m a person of faith. What shames me is that in claiming the name of Jesus I[..]
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  • What Answer Will You Be?

    What Answer Will You Be?

    C. S. Lewis — The Problem of Pain God is both further from us, and nearer to us than any other being… The intimacy between God and even the meanest creature is closer than any that creatures can attain with one another. Thomas Merton –[..]
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  • A Prayer for the Fallen

    A Prayer for the Fallen

    Pastel by Ron Weil Merton’s Prayer MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that[..]
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  • The Evil at Sandy Hook

    The Evil at Sandy Hook

      Evil visited this community today, so declared Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy. Malloy was one of many who mentioned evil as the root source of Friday’s mass murder at an elementary school in Newtown. At first glance it would certainly seem to be an accurate statement. Only[..]
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  • Heaven on Parkchester Drive

    Heaven on Parkchester Drive

      There are stacks of books on my mother’s dressers, piles of books on her bedside table, and another stash of books inside the pouch of her walker-on-wheels. The trouble is she can’t read any of the books — the brain tumors have robbed her of[..]
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  • When I lay dying, read me Flannery

    When I lay dying, read me Flannery

      When I am dying do not read to me books of heaven and the people who have visited there. I don’t want to hear their same-song tales of being blinded by the light or lulled into a peace beyond any which they have ever known[..]
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