What We Need

Seek and find

We all need something.

I need a new power cord.

They need to read the Psalms.

You need to shop shouting at your kids.

Guy on that bus bench needs a sandwich.  Two.

Fellow on the couch at this Starbucks needs to stay off drugs.

Woman talking to herself, petting a collie who isn’t there, remembering children who moved away ages ago, needs someone to talk to, or a dog, or children who remember.

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

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And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

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What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

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Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

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Random

What We Need

Seek and find We all need something. I need a new power cord. They need to read the Psalms. You need to shop shouting at your kids. Guy on that bus bench needs a sandwich.  Two. Fellow on the couch at this Starbucks needs to stay off drugs. Woman talking to herself, petting a collie

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Plough Lines

“For sale: baby shoes” is a classified ad. “For sale: baby shoes; never worn” is a story. It’s Hemingway’s, in fact. * “The king is dead” is a news bulletin. “The king died, and the queen died of grief” is a story. Better yet, “The king died, and the queen and her lover died in

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‘Round Here

Imagine someone, potentially anyone, even you, perhaps, but let us, in any case, say. Yes, you. You pull into the diner – Earl’s, Norm’s, Dinah’s, something like that. A sort-of Googie architecture … but maybe not quite, as if it’d been a little late for the Space Age, and late is the one thing you

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Make No Mistake

When I played baseball in 10th grade, our coach was forever admonishing us to Give 110% — often prefaced by a forlorn C’mon fellas … [In 11th grade, the coach would line us up against the chain link fence in front of the dugout and hit baseballs at us. He said this was to train our

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Related

Drinking the Seth Godin … Milk

Motivator Manipulator Maven Which is he? I’m going with maven. Maven may be one of those words we’ve lost sight of, like integrity. Integrity means “wholeness” but we’ve reduced it to “honesty.” So too maven — which means “connoisseur” — has been ironicized, demeaned really, into something like “one who condescends” referring to someone looking

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Never Get Out Of The Boat

So you’re on this boat. You’re near enough to land if you want some of that, but you don’t exactly want to leave the old life. The old life in this case is not the bad old days B.C. Those are way gone. In fact, they mayn’t even be optional for you anymore. Sorry. That’s

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The Adult Test

If you have thought — This is dirty This is broken This is wrong And decided to help — Scrub it Repair it Right it You may be an adult.

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Pieta

I don’t think next year will be so different from this year. Which after all was not so different from the one before. But I think you can be different from last year and I can. Which after all may be true for you as it was also for me.

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