Spirituality
Religion and Life
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I wandered over to the headstone of my Grandpa Jesse Davis after Aunt Becky’s graveside service and while standing to the side of his bones (Grandma Mildred told me to not step on folks in the graveyard…it’s not respectful), I pondered his death. Born in 1901…died 1969. I commented to my contemporary fifty-something cousins, I…
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Becky Marie Davis ran home today. The last time she ran was 1954. But today, her legs were unbound, her lungs filled with fresh air, her heart soaked in heavens glory. As I’ve watched the graceful withering of my Aunt Becky’s physical nature I’ve observed the astounding levity of her soul. One can easily suggest…
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John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis and Grace Walker Taylor all died on November 22nd. Just hours after my grandmother Grace passed on that date in 1993, my niece, Ashley Grace Taylor was born early on a Sunday morning. Her birth helped fill our sense of loss, Grace taken and Grace given. Ashley Grace Taylor Grandma…
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We toured the National Weather Center building at Oklahoma University with our son Brandon before his decision to attend Oklahoma University to study Meteorology. We sat in a 360 degree tower with expansive views of the Oklahoma prairie. I asked the guide, “Is this building tornado-proof?” The answer was, “Yes, and bomb proof also…the glass…
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It was the first time I ever prayed with my face touching the earth…and the first time I have ever had a prayer interrupted by a President of the United States. I lay prostrate on the green grass surrounding the Washington Monument, praying with ten other men in a tight circle, and a half million…
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I grew up alongside Kevin Arnold of the Wonder Years only without a Jets letter jacket. Those neighborhood landmarks and watershed moments and the guys I ran with, through the streets and adjacent woods just a couple blocks north of Limestone School, are etched in the granite of my adolescent memory. So this section is…
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Do you ever yearn? Some folks yearn to write. Others yearn to paint, or to capture images with a camera, or yearn to connect to a husband or wife or daughter or son…or to God. Yearning embraces a sense that somethings missing, that perfection or wholeness or actualization or some other buzzword of fulfillment is…
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During my final two years at Harding University, I lived in a dilapidated house with eight guys on the edge of campus in Searcy, Arkansas. Rector House stood on North Grand Street and has since been demolished, but in the spring of 1981, it still stood…barely…just months from institutional progress in the form of a…
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When I slip into a neurotic moment (pretty common for me) while wandering about bookstores, I read the first line of a book and then skip to the final page and read the last line. I love the first and last lines of great books because they frame the body of work like neon parentheses. Here are some…
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December 24, 2012 On December 14th, I wept for twenty six souls in Newtown, Connecticut. The despair I felt was a sense that we’ve lost control as a nation, abandoned universal morality for individual amorality. Have faith, hope and love, ancient words from ancient texts, devolved into hollow shells of confectionary meaninglessness? And then I…
Bespoke 