I wrote this letter to a colleague who dedicated years to writing a novel. It was not easy. When you chase something meaningful while navigating daily existence, you feel time’s tick. Yet there are moments when we slip wholly into creative flow that frees us to step out of time and connect with something greater.
Blog
Fortunate Fall: An Angel Plunges into Finitude Just for Love
In the film Wings of Desire, an angel perches on buildings that tower over Berlin. Seeing the world only in black and white, he listens to the stream of human thought driven by the spectrum of emotions. Without interfering, except for leaning in to express empathy, he documents earthly existence until taking the plunge to become human.
Mottled History: The Love Behind a Peeling Vintage Table
I wore down layers of old paint on the vintage table. Running my hands over the just-right smoothness, I saw stories in the splotched surface: black paint from the furniture’s earliest days—maybe when my grandmother sipped morning coffee and gazed on her flowers; green when my mother went for a spring look; and sunny yellow in the hopeful days of my marriage.
You Can’t Take the Country Boy out of the Man
Was I lucky to have a dad obsessed with transplanting north Georgia mountain tradition to Alabama soil? I didn’t think so, especially on Saturday afternoons. While the neighbors’ kids played kickball on the cul-de-sac, our family tended the crops on the utility easement. There was nothing sentimental about growing squash, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, corn, and beans, beans, beans—until now.
Nature’s Humor—If We’re Free to See in the Moment
For all its beauty, nature can play a joke, as in the time I once passed beneath a stately magnolia and spotted a nest with a tag likely torn from a pillow. It was a laugh-out-loud moment: a bird recycling human trash.