July 2020
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So David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. Soon his brothers and all his other relatives joined him there. Then others began coming—men who were in trouble or in debt or who were just discontented—until David was the captain of about 400 men. 1 Samuel 22:1-2, New Living Translation Lately, I’ve been…
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Years ago, my eldest sons and I began recording a series of songs that was meant to follow up our Full Fathom Five EP. My good friend, Jeff, who has run sound for many of our concerts, invited us to his basement to lay down the tracks in a more professional manner and away from…
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“…look you, this brave o’erhanging / firmament, this majestical roof, fretted / with golden fire…” Hamlet, from Shakespeare’s Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2, Lines 323-325 Between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. each evening falls the mortal drowsy hour, at least for me. Upon finishing our bedtime routine with the six and eight-year-old, either my wife or…
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Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body is full of darkness. Be careful, then, that the light within you is not darkness. So if your whole body is full of light, with no part…
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“That eye that told you so looked but asquint.” Goneril, from Shakespeare’s King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3 Studying Shakespeare provides a deep well of rich words on which to refresh one’s dehydrated vocabulary. There’s a reason we owe so much of our language to the Bard, and why the best insults come from the…
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Rudyard Kipling’s If has been one of those poems (a deepening ground) I regularly return to, especially in difficult times. As a father of six, I would hope my children could aspire to the quality of life that Kipling captures in this 32-line poem of conditional statements. This is anaphora at its best! It’s a…
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“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once…
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None of us willingly chooses to live life without safety and happiness. Those ideas permeate our very Declaration of Independence. Only fools, anarchists, or sadomasochists would welcome perpetual danger, fear, and sorrow. And yet, setting up safety and happiness as the sole pillars for living are weak constructs at best. I’ve commented on this very…
the deepening ground 