And Now for Something Completely Different

Snowstorm every week getting to you, good buddy?
Wondering where the sun has gone for the last two months?
Thinking of last summer instead of how to spend today?

This quiet moment of something completely different
presented to answer one of your questions.
The sun has gone to Puerto Rico (Confer photo).
Saw it there on a working visit last week when our
conference members were taken to Old San Juan for a few hours.
Hardly seems right to keep the view to myself.
So enjoy, and take courage. The sun is coming north any day now.

Let the Light Shine

A festive time of many colors -
A Baltimore neighborhood annually bathed in light.
Blessings of the Christmas season to you,
and a coming year of peace, too.

Winter’s White Blanket

Winter snow snuck into Chicago during the night.
City snow stays beautiful for a short time,
like a blanket of white on the evergreens.
But the streets must be cleared that life might go on,
life thought of in its narrow form of “business as usual.”
Maybe snow is sent to us to slow us down,
just for awhile.

Last Leaf of Autumn

The afternoon temperature hints at snow
some day soon.
The last leaf of Autumn holds on for dear life
as we all do,
anticipating harder times, perhaps.
But letting go will lead to flight
in the stiff upward breeze.
Time to pray for a soft landing!

A Stone’s Throw Away

Sometimes it is good to leave the Contemporary Age
and spend some time in the Stone Age.
How did “they” get those little round stones to balance up there?
Were the kids of giants just amusing themselves one day?
Such scenes force us to ask different questions than
what cereal to have for breakfast.
Anything to keep the dendrites growing on a 67th birthday!

Follow the Leader

Summer brings out new and different things,
like sharing the sidewalk with the invasion of the Segue people.
Quietly zipping along,
they defy gravity as they snake their way through summer crowds.
What if we had been born with wheels instead of feet?

Somehow I like it better the way we are.
Tires would never feel the grains of warm sand giving way under one’s foot on a beach.
Happy summer!

Independence Day 2010

Freed from the cocoon of their birth,
Butterflies sail along as they will,
enamored by the beauty all around them.

Independence is our yearning from birth.
Blessed are those who live in countries where they enjoy freedom of all sorts…
Freedom for doing good, not evil.

Passion Flower

Judea’s dead tree On Calvary planted:
Life flowers anew.

Calvary’s verdant tree In Danei’s heart planted:
Go, spread the Good News.

Paul’s vision planted In welcoming hearts today:
Faithful compassion.

Where there is dryness Hearts withers by burdens borne:
Life flowers anew.

Into the Garden

Jesus led them into the garden of Gethsemane,
the moonlight casting deep shadows
from the ancient olive trees brooding over the midnight earth.

He draws us also, in this week we now call Holy,
though, that first time, it was horrific
like so many places on the earth where
other innocents are still caught and led away to death.
Let us join him…and them.

Love is Ingenious

On a light post of a footbridge leading across the Tiber River
for all the world to see,
a man has declared his love.
“I love you now just as before, even more than before,
forever – yours alone.”
His arrow points to the lock on this light box
because love is ingenious and lets simple things speak volumes.