By Wayne Allensworth It’s difficult to imagine now, but when the Apollo 11 lunar module set down in the Sea of Tranquility all those years ago, Americans were fixed on their TV screens, awed, fascinated, and, in some cases, disoriented by the momentous conclusion of the space race. I recall gathering with neighbors around a TV and watching the somewhat grainy broadcast with the sense of adventure...
By Wayne Allensworth Jacob’s Ladder (William Blake) All good things — and the bad ones, too — come to an end. Everything does. But it can’t be any other way. I was thinking along those lines while my wife and I were “taking down” (as opposed to “putting up”) Christmas, that is, the decorations, this year. We like to have a festive house for that wonderful, evocative, and often, poignant...
By Wayne Allensworth Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. John 12:27 On the day my father collapsed in my house, which led to a painful and long dreaded decision on my part, I talked to our pastor, and then to a cardiologist. Daddy had trouble breathing. The emergency room staff gave him something that stabilized...
By Wayne Allensworth Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. — John 8:12 Written in the fourth century BC, Plato’s Republic includes the oldest recorded account of what Dr. Sam Parnia, author of Lucid Dying, calls “recalled experiences of death” (RED). In that account, a Greek...
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world. — Max Weber: Essays in Sociology By Wayne Allensworth I craned my neck to see the magnificent ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I felt the exhilarating sensation of a tingle running through my scalp as I gazed at the Creation, the Fall, the Expulsion from the...
By Wayne Allensworth To this end I was born, and for this cause came I into the world,that I should bear witness unto the truth — John 18:37 I had come to see Mr. K knowing that his birthday was in June, so I asked him what the exact date was. He couldn’t remember. He took a notebook from the old-fashioned TV tray that sits by his recliner and thumbed through the pages. A thin smile passed...
By Wayne Allensworth For all my friends, whatever their beliefs, that we may all open our eyes and see. Recorded in the Gospel According to St. John, Chapter 8, is one of the most intriguing stories in the Bible. Jesus was teaching at the temple when the scribes and Pharisees brought an adulterous woman to him for judgment. In one of many instances when the religious authorities attempted to trap...
By Wayne Allensworth The period of totality was approaching. We watched and waited and glanced up when the clouds broke above us deep in the heart of the Texas hill country. I craned my neck and felt the way I had when I was drawn to look upward symbolically at the heavens by the Sistine Chapel ceiling, my neck aching, but not thinking about it. Caught up in a unique moment in the flow of time. A...
By Wayne Allensworth “Sic transit mundus” (Brother Joshua in A Canticle for Liebowitz) In 1959’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, author William M. Miller’s story suggests a series of questions that are as pressing now as they were during the Cold War, when a nuclear apocalypse was very much on the collective mind of the world: Is civilization possible without the continuing advancement of...
By Wayne Allensworth A light in the night sky on a prairie horizon. A falling star passing through a deep blue firmament that phases ever so subtly to lighter shades of blue bordered by a wisp of cottony clouds. The red orange hues of the setting sun. Stark tree limbs seem to reach for the star on a smoky autumn evening. Let your eyes stay riveted on the star as long as you can see its proud...
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