It’s a word that gets passed around a lot in social and theological terms, and soon becomes one of the “invisible” words that we hear about in sermons or read about in campaign speeches, and – like the word grace – we lose sight of what it means. If we really understood it from the [...]
by Mark Twain It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the [...]
I read this snippet of poetry today and my first thought was that it’s a tale of The Closet, of hiding our lives from those we love. And more importantly of hiding it from those who love us. The more I studied on the lines, the more the message spread farther into other parts of [...]
I knew this one was going to go wrong when I got an email forwarded to me from my mom, who got it from a friend who’d had it forwarded to him, etc. so many times that the indents for the forwarding put the actual text almost completely off the page. Let me mention here [...]
I cut my writer’s teeth studying about the facts of, and then creating fictionalizations of death. It’s stock-in-trade for a mystery novelist. It’s part of the great Mary Poppins carpet back of tales and songs we carry as a Southern novelist. I have written more than my share of funeral homilies and have spoken off [...]
