Posts Tagged "blog"

On Seeds

Transformation So, at first it’s easy. Growth. Green. Life. Creation. All sorts of good things. But what happens when something you don’t want comes up in the middle of your garden? Weeds, say. Weeds come from seeds, too, you know. But forget weeds for now.  They are, after all, minor annoyances that you are meant to pull up and destroy. What about a plant that you thought would be good—a plant you committed to taking care...

On Emptiness

Fullness It strikes me as impossible to write about emptiness. I realize that the prompt I am using here was geared toward photographers.  But, even there, it is impossible to photograph emptiness. Isn’t it? Emptiness—the absence of somethingness. And no matter what space you write about, or draw about, or photograph, there is something always there. God is never absent. There is no such thing as emptiness, unless you are...

Just A Red-Blooded American Male And Miracle Worker

(by Patricia Treece) Sixteen-month-old Elizabeth Fanning lies listlessly in her mother’s arms.  Anxiously, drawn-faced Mrs. Fanning coaxes her child to take even a spoonful of the liver soup recommended by doctors.  But although Elizabeth’s swollen belly and twiglike limbs make her look like a starvation victim, the lethargic baby has no interest in food of any kind.  Little Betsy, as her parents call her, has a fatal...

On Healing

Light and Dark Perhaps healing is the opposite of brokenness—or breaking, really. Breaking apart—putting the pieces back together is healing, isn’t it? Gluing the pieces back into its whole state.  Or the perceived whole state, anyway. I think we get lost in our understanding of healing when we force our idea of the outcome onto the process. Take a serious illness, for example.  We only see healing as a complete restoration of...

On Brokenness

Look to the Soul What is brokenness except the absence of wholeness? But when you break a whole apart, each piece is, in itself, another whole. Science teaches us that—that no matter how many times you break something apart, you find another whole. So what exactly does that mean in terms of humanity? Because when you take a child out of its family, he might not remain whole in terms of integrity.  But then being part of a whole family...