Gather 'round…
Initial reaction: smile
2 seconds in: “I’m not really in a good place to start this one TODAY.”
5 seconds in: sigh
10 seconds: smileThere’s no better day than today, and no better time than when you’re not quite ready.
I’m in. Who’s with me?
KJ
Starting today – no complaints for one week. Only gratitude. As soon as you drift to the negative, yank yourself back to the positive. To beauty and light. Go.
“Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty.” – Doris Day
The fan attached to our bargain model fireplace unit is dying. It’s a small miracle that it has gotten us this far, and it’ll be a large one if it fires up this fall when we call it back into service. You know how things on the brink of death get after a season of... Continue Reading →
So back in the day, Solomon finished the Temple and brought in the Ark, and they had one big to-do. A major shindig. They sacrificed so many sheep and oxen that they couldn’t be counted. How many must that be, for not long ago they had just gotten through numbering every male in Israel, to... Continue Reading →
When I was 16, I helped my YoungLife leader finish a jigsaw puzzle on his living room table. It was gorgeous. The puzzle was a painting of an old man holding a golden package aloft, glowing with joy as his bundle glowed with something more ethereal. The expression on the man’s face was beyond description;... Continue Reading →
I have long been a devotee of J.I. Rodale’s Synonym Finder, the Colossus of the thesaurus world, a reference mutant juiced up on creative steroids. Rodale, known more for his organic living evangelism, was apparently also a lover of words and the palaces that are built on them, and for that we should all be... Continue Reading →
The Manifestation of God. This is what we’re celebrating today. Just a few little words, loaded well over the safety line. Theophany is here, and Christ is baptized in the Jordan, by none other than John the Baptizer himself, who--I dare say--has no interest in baptizing the Messiah himself. I imagine he was feeling a... Continue Reading →
The latest installment of the Ottinger Christmas Letter: Christmas Letter 2017 (Past Years: Christmas Letters from the Nexus of the Universe) Christ is Born! Glorify Him! KJ
“The snow looks light and the sky dark, but in fact the sky is lighter than the snow. Obviously the thing illumined cannot be lighter than its illuminator. The classical demonstration of this point involves simply laying a mirror flat on the snow so that it reflects in its surface the sky, and comparing by... Continue Reading →
Last summer we had this crazed cardinal. He appeared one day on the back deck, chipping like a wild man. Incessantly. For weeks. Every day he would return, and every day he would march up and down the railing boards, from one end of the deck to the other, pacing, chip, chip, chipping at us... Continue Reading →
I didn't read much as a kid, beyond a library of Garfield and Shel Silverstien (both quality literature I still stand by as my foundation). Over the years, there were a few school-mandated books (Island of the Blue Dolphins? This is honestly the only one I remember), but I read them begrudgingly at best, and they never... Continue Reading →
I spent a few primetime hours in the emergency room last night. There has been a nefarious flipflopping in the vicinity of my ticker over the past few days, and when the frequency of the internal acrobatics reached sub-minute intervals—recorded much like timing contractions, only without the pain, and adding the joy of a stethoscope—I... Continue Reading →
We're at the beginning of Advent, just one week in, preparing for the Birth of Christ, and today we see Mary taking her first steps towards bearing the God of heaven. As usual, a timely reminder. She was the promised one, Mary. She was the child God blessed the barren Joachim and Anna with in... Continue Reading →
Tales From the Nexus 