Reflecting on his college’s bourgeoning crisis,
he thinks that the school’s mission and vision
in their historic context are critical to the
school’s authenticity and integrity for reputat-

ion, denomination, administration, faculty,
present students and students to come and there-
fore a “witness” as a great liberal arts college
in the historic Christian tradition — a tradition

ever appreciative for that past, never stuck
in the past, ever seeking, never receding, ever
exploring, ever expanding, ever affirming
foundations, ever questioning those very found-

ations, ever and always faithful to the unbounded
grace, mercy, peace and justice of Jesus, ever
aware of the significance of the Cosmic Christ
for universal, inclusive, connective implications,

ever-living the life of students, instructors,
scholars together in authentic community
challenging the status quo, presuppositions,
the power structures, the motives of those

who hold profit and power and ideology above
physics and biology and chemistry, philosophy
and psychology and history and prose and poetry
and metaphor and simile and scientific and re-

ligious study and service to the “least of
these” and humble, life-long, loving inquiry —
for now all see dimly but then face to face
into the gracious revelation of God’s Great Mystery.

The cardinal is back in
the shrub just outside
the window; the female
beckons and he abides.

A black-capped chickadee
hops and skips from branch
to branch dropping
to the pond’s side

where ten-year-old gold-
fish move to the sur-
face after a long
winter’s abide.

Surprise, surprise, an
Eastern Towhee with
dirty red sides
comes to abide

for a few moments
and then among
the branches
to hide.

They regularly pass the cemetery
where her parents’ remains remain.

“Want to stop?” he asks rhetorically
knowing the answer is no. It has

been years since her late husband
died and his remains remain in a

little, country, church cemetery
hundreds of miles away and she

has no desire to drive there to
walk among the stones along that

country road. His parents remains
remain buried in a cemetery along

a railroad track in a suburb of a
big city miles and miles away. He

sometimes passes on the highway.
“Would you like to take a hike and

jog a bit in the dunes along the
shore?” he asks rhetorically know-

ing the answer is yes. They jog and
hike and come to the place overlook-

ing the water where Chocolate Labs
had trotted and pranced and danced

and once in awhile jumped with burn-
ing paws on the hot, summer sand

before dashing for the surf. And
every time he asks the answer is yes.

The woman contemplated her backyard
after wintering in the Southwest.
Her Northern seaside, decorative grass yard
was in need of trimming. She gave her best.

She clipped and pulled and cut her way along
the dune grass, English Ivy and butterfly bush
and she did it all with a whistle and a song
until the unwieldy wheelbarrow she could not push.

So her husband tending to the pond
made his way to where the wheelbarrow stood.
He took the stuffed barrow topped with fronds
and wheeled it out of sight lifting her mood.

They both had had enough spring cleaning that day
and said till another day the yard will stay.

He had a mountain cycling accident
eighteen years ago that left him
with twelve broken ribs, a shattered
clavicle, a crushed sternum and a
hernia that he didn’t know he had
until eighteen years later. He spent
three days in intensive care as a
precautionary move and two more
in a regular hospital room. He
had had a nano-second to turn his
head to the side before hitting the
turf otherwise he would have snapp-
ed his neck and been a quadriplegic
or more likely dead. He jogged
thirty minutes yesterday. A close
friend of his spent hours and hours
on a plane two-years ago flying
back from Europe only to develop
a blood clot which traveled not as
far as he had but far enough to fill
his lungs. The physicians told him
he was ten minutes away from death
when he arrived at the emergency
room. Yesterday, he spent three
hours walking around Los Angeles.
A nano-second and ten minutes and
the two will share a drink or two
when they get together for their
fifty-year college reunions at
different schools at the same time
in almost the same place.

They
are hate-filled, right-wing ideologues
and they won’t go away.
They
are here to stay, they say.
They
won’t listen to
anything anyone else
has to say.
It’s always their way
or the highway.
They
don’t strap bombs
to blow themselves away.
They
just blow others away.
They
kill the spirit and destroy
careers and vocations
and callings come what may.
They
are true believers
with the crazy faith that one day
their Jesus will come on
a cloud and usher them
all to safety
and when Armageddon
comes and goes and
then the end comes
and unbelievers
are cast away,
they
the true believers
will shout hooray!
but,
they
have it all wrong
with their hate.
They
will be brought
in by saving grace
in spite of themselves
and the inclusive,
universal loving
God will then have the last say,
because the Lamb wins.

We looked across the pool to the
second floor condo and saw little
lights flickering in a jar and we

wondered if the owner of the
condo had caught lightning bugs
and put them in a mason jar,

but it was winter in Arizona
and we had never seen lightning
bugs there at that time of year

and we aren’t there in the summer
so we don’t know if lightning bugs
are around then or not. So we asked

the owner of the condo about the
lightning bugs and she said she bought
the jar at a local store and that it

is battery operated and solar-powered.
So, we bought two jars, brought them
home to Michigan and hung them on the

balcony railing which faces south to
get the maximum sun and every night
we watch the flickering in the mason

jars and are carried back to our youth
when we ran around the neighborhood
catching lightning bugs and putting

them in mason jars with holes punched
in the lids so the lightning bugs could
breathe and our mothers would say to

let the bugs go because they would
die if left in the jar even with the
holes our fathers punched in the lid

for air and we don’t have to run
around the neighborhood doing that
now, in part, because the neighbors

already are suspicious and, in part,
because doing that takes a lot of
energy, as we recall.

Certain parts of the anatomy
are referred to in less than

flattering terms especially
those that we use intimately,

procreationally and recreationally.
I have never understood why those

parts which are so important and good
are held in such low regard and mis-

understood. I have a high regard
for mine and the endeavors which

produced two glorious children and
years upon years of continuing pleasure;

but for some reason those wonderful
parts are referred to as junk

(really, seriously junk? I didn’t
think God made any of that.) and

worse and for females — an animal
and what rhymes with front. The

female sexual anatomy which I find
fascinatingly glorious is referred

to derogatorily. Why? What is wrong
here? Is it left over repressive

Victorian morality? Is it a form
of self-hatred and misogyny? It’s

vulgarity run amok and why we
just don’t seem to give a flying

you know what. Why would we do this
to our God-given glorious anatomy?

It is just as if you lit a flame from a live flame:
It is the entire flame you receive.
–St. Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022)

There is no such thing as a little grace
or a little more grace
to let your little light shine.
The grace is just here, there and everywhere
and when you put the wick in that
eternal flame,
that which you take away is just the same
as the eternal flame from which it came.
It’s yours and it’s you —
lock, stock, barrel — through and through.

They arrived home, the
upper Midwest, after
a three-month winter’s
stay in the Southwest.
Once a gasket cracked
when the water came on
flooding the bath and
bedroom. This year the
furnace sputtered and
came to an abrupt halt
requiring an after hours
visit from the heating
and cooling guy. Think
big dollars going up
and out the vent. He
wondered if the trip
was worth it and then
he remembered winter.
“Don’t think a thing
of it, dear,” he called
to his wife, “It could
have happened if we
had stayed home and
it was twenty below.
At some point in time
it was going to go.
And I’m glad we went.”