One Year In The Shadow

"I had been speculating earlier this week as to why [Harry Potter author] J.K. Rowling never mentioned the presence of Dementors at St. Mungo's. I'm pretty sure they are responsible for slowing the rate of time in addition to their usual effects."

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But Do They Go To Heaven? Remembering Kate

In the small Georgia town where she grew up, people didn’t let their dogs in the house, and they didn’t pen them in. The dogs knew their places, and if they decided to wander the town, well, everybody with four legs and a tail did. They’d come in bleary-eyed with their pockets filled with the secret doings of the night in time for breakfast. “That dog,” mom said, “used to go to church.”

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Being Good In The Dark: Suffering With Cancer Like Good People

Theater structures emotion.  And around here have usually preferred our lives to resemble a musical comedy, with lots of absurdity and silliness.  It isn't that we don't take ourselves seriously.  It's that we know that seriousness isn't always in the long face or the serious talk. 

Really, it's in love.  And really good love knows how to laugh, when to weep.  Mostly how not to stare unendingly at itself and its needs.  In fact good comedy takes life very seriously.

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Medical Adultery

The oncologist’s pleasant face clouded over a bit when he looked at the things that the Other Doctor wanted to know, refused point-blank to order some of the tests she wanted.

We had committed medical adultery.

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Who Watches In The Dark

The wall of the Family Cemetery, Siloam, Georgia. Copyright 2008, The Otter You live (and die) in the world you create. I think for mom, it's been much more satisfying to feel that love keeps putting one foot in front of the other, that we live in the world that she helped to shape in her church and the neighborhood.  Her own hours of service have come home to her.

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