Everything is grace
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Abortion rates in the United States have gone up 21%. Yes, I’m going to break my moratorium on talking about the pro-life movement for a minute. I’ll be getting all these statistics from The Guttmacher Institute. Rates of abortions in this country reliably fell, no matter who was president, from 1981 until around 2017. […]
It was the busiest week of the year. I was helping out at the back-to-school summer day camp for the church outreach near my house. Most of the time, I only volunteer there a few days a week. But this time, I spent every afternoon for five days zooming back and forth between classrooms, […]
It’s the time of year that I call ”the tomato glut.” Tomato vines are strange, uncanny plants. I think they could take over the world if given half a chance. If you cut a small stem, called a “sucker,” off a tomato plant and stick it in a glass of water, it will grow […]
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew: When Jesus heard of the death of John the Baptist, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. The crowds heard of this and followed him on foot from their towns. When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved […]
I was happy in the sunshine today. I went to Toronto, the little town north of Steubenville, which has a glorious clean outdoor pool. The hours between ten and noon are their adult swim, where patrons over 18 can swim laps without the crowds and noise of the children who come later in the […]
It started with a spat over poison ivy. Jimmy’s boy came by to inspect the garden. The garden is getting exciting. The cherry tomatoes are ripening first, and the paste and slicing tomatoes are so laden with green fruit that the cages are toppling over. I have never had a crop like this. If […]
Sometimes I feel so well that I forget that I’m not. It was just another day. That’s the way days are now. I used to feel terrible, most of the time, but the past few years have been relatively happy and uneventful. I’ve been at peace with myself, more often than not. I was at […]
He proposed another parable to them. “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the ‘birds of the sky come and […]
The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. The slaves of the householder came to him […]
The nightmare began when I was sleeping, and it didn’t end when I woke up. I dreamed I was fighting my way through a maze of dirty rooms in a dank basement that went on forever. There were other creatures in there with me that looked like people, but they weren’t. They were demons who […]