Writing is too easy for us narcissists. There is the delusion that others care, and worse, care about you—unless none of it is about you, because all of life has been given to you. Being more than three-score years old, husband, father, architect, football player, coach and one of those the dreaded “cradle” Episcopalians, what I offer is fraught with the impossibilities of living up to those gifts. So I write about what is irreconcilable other than through God’s love and grace that passes all understanding. And I steal really good phrases. Often.
About Duo Dickinson
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No Sense: Love Across the Political Divide
Life is not politics. That has not been so obvious in these months. Everything is qualified (or disqualified) by whether you want the President to be our president or not. There is less and less tolerance, more and more nullification of any validity of any credibility depending on what you believe is best for our […]
Smack In The Middle Of “Ordinary Time,” With You
Humans make things. If not, as an architect, I would be out of a job. We make the calendar. And mashed potatoes. And religious rites. I love mashed potatoes, and the Episcopal Church. And we all use a calendar others have made for us. The making of a calendar for the Episcopal Church means that […]
No, Not That Cancel Culture
It is virtually a cliché to moan that this COVID-19 Season has been a diseased bull in our composed china closet. How many long-planned things have been cancelled? Or ambiguously “delayed”? The extreme cost and insane focus of 21st-century weddings — cancelled. Graduations and all the attendant celebrations — cybered. Occupations and economic certainty — […]
Masked Morality
The yarmulke, the burka, the hijab, the grey flannel suit, and the pork pie hat are all governed by cultural sanction and personal projections of belief. All are inwardly meaningful and outwardly expressive of that meaning; what we wear is far more than mere personal preferences for comfort or functionality. Undeniable sartorially manifested morality, messaged […]
“This World Is Not Conclusion” (Song of COVID-19)
By Emily Dickinson:
This World is not Conclusion.
A Species stands beyond —
Invisible, as Music —
But positive, as Sound —
It beckons, and it baffles —
Philosophy — don’t know —
And through a Riddle, at the last —
Sagacity, must go —
To guess it, puzzles scholars —
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown —
Faith slips — and laughs, and rallies —
Blushes, if any see —
Plucks at a twig of Evidence —
And asks a Vane, the way —
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit —
Strong Hallelujahs roll —
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul —
– 1862
As part of the Emily Days series on Saved by Design.
“Escape from Circumstances”: Dickinson in Quarantine
Take It from the Woman Who Self-Sequestered for Over Fifty Years
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