other deepening places
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Tonight as I read to my two youngest sons from C. S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian, one of Lucy’s lines cut to the quick. I had to stop and take a picture of it with my phone, lest I forget it. I’ve read the novel multiple times, but tonight these words rang more true than ever.
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“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” Leonardo da Vinci My thanks to Jack Warner, former colleague and cooperating teacher, for introducing me to one of Pittsburgh’s hidden gems, The Mattress Factory Art Museum. Since that initial visit almost twenty years ago, I’ve
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Autumn was in the air this morning! Here in Western Pennsylvania, the temperature bottomed out at 49 degrees Fahrenheit, a delectable foretaste of Fall. For me, it is THE best season of the year, full of harvest, campfires, the warming palette of the changing leaves, and pumpkin everything. I never grow tired of pumpkin! There’s
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“As the season is now fast approaching when every man must expect to be drawn into the field of action, it is highly necessary that he should prepare his mind, as well as everything necessary for it. It is a noble cause we are engaged in, it is the cause of virtue and mankind, every
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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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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
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THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us,
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Obdurate (adj): stubbornly persistent in wrongdoing, hardened in feelings; resistant to persuasion or softening influences https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obdurate Let’s be honest. We all have the propensity to choose the narrative we want to believe and refuse to consider other perspectives. But what concerns me is the growing trend to remove access to any dissenting point of view.
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This Father’s Day I had planned to post a poem I wrote in honor of my Italian father and grandfather a few years back, but this morning I heard the phrase “fathers-forth” in my heart. Deep within me the voice of Gerard Manley Hopkins echoed and I knew that today was a day for Pied
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Sometimes, Middle-earth and Perelandra don’t seem so far away! Over the weekend, my friend Kyle mentioned returning to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and McCullough’s John Adams for inspiration. They spoke to him of enduring hardship to build a better future. At the same time, I’ve been revisiting The Lord of the Rings films
the deepening ground 