Spirituality

Religion and Life

  • RV 7 .  Coming Home: These are the Days

    We have wandered the west lassoing Wyoming, and taking in OK, KS, NE, SD, ID, and CO. My Dad loved wandering vacations so he took his teenage brother, his parents and three Taylor children and drove the eight of us to California in a Chrysler Imperial that looked like a batmobile. My dad had always…

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  • The Winter of Our Unsettled Season

    It was a tough year to be human in 2020. I mentioned this in passing to our cat, Boo, and she looked at me with cold green eyes, blinked, and walked away unfazed by the concerns of her bipedal servant. Oh to be so carefree. Alas, I’m feeling more Jimmy Buffett these days when he…

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  • April 11, 2020

    2020 April 5     I left for college my freshman year driving a Pontiac crammed with Advent stereo speakers and a Yamaha receiver. I was wearing my uniform of the times, Nike sneakers with a sky blue swoosh, a polo shirt and Lee jeans. Elvis had just left the building, he died in August…

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  • April 4, 2020

    March 28  Questions of priority and sanity are framed in stark relief by cataclysm. For instance, “Why is it easier to buy marijuana than a good book these days?”, Wendy Paris asks in an LA Times article. Closer to home, a friend of mine wrote:  “I’m seriously confused, Dunkin’ Doughnuts is still open but parks…

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  • Strange Days

    These are strange days. The earth doesn’t seem to be spinning as fast, yet the moon rises and we rest awaiting another day and the wonder of what shoe will drop next. It is a dreary Saturday with no sports on television, as the barbarians are climbing the walls, my retirement account is shrinking, and…

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  • Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m 14 years old. Which is my typical maturity level, but no, I’m referring to the other cognitive signposts of that age. Take pickleball for instance.  As I compete in pickleball tournaments and the competitive juices flow, I feel 14 years old once more. Seven matches later, I realize I’m…

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  • Kitchen of Grace

    Kitchen of Grace

    People ask me, “What are you doing in Denver?” I tell them I’m helping Karen Taylor and Tammy Ross cook 700 meals for our youth group from Bartlesville, with very little refrigerator space which means I’m on a first name basis with grocery clerks on Colorado avenue. In the midst of cooking, washing dishes, and…

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  • Singing with Al Green

    Singing with Al Green

    Karen and I were driving through Wisconsin farmland a couple of years ago, and I was overcome by pastoral splendor although it may have been too many cheese curds. I began singing America the Beautiful, like Ray Charles, because after all, my middle name is Ray. I’ve always loved that song. It’s not ambivalent, it resolves,…

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  • 1922

    1922

    “I was born at home and my family gave the money we saved by not going to the hospital to the church building fund.” Madison Holroyd

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  • Midnight Confession

    Midnight Confession

    Word.   Word is a strange word…the longer you stare at it, the odder it becomes. Stranger still is the moment you hear correct words in a song after many years of singing the wrong words. Karen was making a Margherita pizza last night while singing Midnight Confession, a song by The Grass Roots from…

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