the suppliants

The darkest grace...

Go through and count up all the dark grace that nice people face in Scripture. Right from God's throne. All evil is not bad. It's heavenly. It jolts our stories in surprising ways. It brings health. It reveals the glorious danger deep inside the Godhead.

Flannery O'Connor says we "don't realize how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross." The cross. Yes. The darkest grace. Right at the center. All evil is not bad.

   O'Connor summarizes this at the end of her essay, "The Fiction Writer and His Country," where she explains, "St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: `The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.' No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell."

Don't Look Down!

The bus is braking to get around the cyclists.  LOOK at how far the drop is!

This is just how some of the roads in the Sierras are.  I drove hugging the side of the mountain and holding my breath around the sharp curves.  Once I came to a very narrow gap in the road and made the mistake of looking down.  It was like being in an airplane and it almost freaked me out!

I will let you down...I will make you hurt...POWERFUL!

I think about her...
I can't let her go...
I pray and pray but she won't go away...
She's waiting for us...
I know she is waiting...
Lord help me to wait...

The Gipper once said...

"Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."

-Ronald Reagan