Tag: family

  • Letting Go

    Letting Go

      We are starting out our New Year with one less family member. It was not a death that claimed him. Not a death in the typical sense at any rate, though, if I am completely honest, there have been moments when I think that[..]
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    01 01 , 2022 1 Comment
  • The People We Don’t Miss

    The People We Don’t Miss

    Hardly anyone ever mentions the people  we don't miss at the family gatherings. I don't mean those we love who have gone on to what I hope is an eternal celebration and not an eternal rest. I'm talking about the people who no longer gather[..]
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    21 12 , 2021 No Comments
  • Reclaiming Jesus from the Evangelicals

    Reclaiming Jesus from the Evangelicals

      I asked her if she had read a certain Christian's blog that we both followed at one time. "No," she replied. "I don't keep up with anything out of the Evangelical community any more." I didn't have to ask why; I already knew.  The[..]
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    24 07 , 2021 1 Comment
  • Misplaced Sense of Shame

    Misplaced Sense of Shame

      Alienation. To be estranged, hostile or indifferent, especially where attachment formerly existed. We most typically think of alienation as the thing that occurs when couples separate or divorce. Alienation always precedes such break-ups. Bookstores have a wide swath of self-help books for those dealing[..]
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    03 02 , 2021 No Comments
  • Rise Up from the Country

    Rise Up from the Country

      Several years ago, while working on Mother of Rain, the beginning of the Appalachian novels I wrote, I snuck in late to the evening service at Christians Bend Church in Tennessee. I had not been in the church since 1968. The last time I[..]
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    19 12 , 2020 7 Comments
  • The Ring of St. Simons

    The Ring of St. Simons

    She gave me a ring; rose gold, with a Celtic Cross made of turquoise, a diamond at its center, this woman whose name I can no longer remember. I saw her sitting there, on a bench in a dark corner of a popular eatery in[..]
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    02 08 , 2020 2 Comments
  • Riding Shot-Gun

    Riding Shot-Gun

      I came across this photo while looking for another. Everyone in this picture has gone on to be with God except for me and the babies. The two I'm carrying and the one sitting at the table. That's Mama, the baby of her family,[..]
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    30 06 , 2020 No Comments
  • Cornbread, Calvinists & Covid

    Cornbread, Calvinists & Covid

    I made cornbread. The old-fashioned kind. You know, with corn meal and flour, not the kind that comes out of a Jiffy or Dave's box. There was a time when I knew how to make cornbread from heart, the way I do my biscuits.  Today,[..]
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    18 05 , 2020 5 Comments
  • Writing Memoir with Author Ann Hite

    Writing Memoir with Author Ann Hite

    Editor's Note: I first met author Ann Hite through her book Ghost on Black Mountain. It was one of the best ghost story novels I had read in decades. Ann and I share a love of Appalachia and the stories that come out of the mountains.[..]
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    06 05 , 2020 5 Comments