Browsing Category: Short Story

               It was not a job Ryan enjoyed, but looking at the pasture-paddock, he saw no other choice.  Across the hillside, there were only weeds: ragweed, briars, and a lower weed that smothered the ground and no animal would eat.                 For years, he’d left alone, as the cattle picked through and ate on the […]

               “…had I not believed that after death the life of the soul remains with the consequences of our acts, a belief which Epicurus rejected; and I asked: If we were immortal and lived in unending bodily pleasure, with no fear of losing it, why should we not be happy?  What else should we be […]

               “…to make conversation, to share a joke, to perform mutual acts of kindness, to read together well-written books, to share in trifling and serious matters, to disagree though without animosity—just as a person debates with himself—and in the very rarity of disagreement to find the salt of normal harmony, to teach each other something […]

“…free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion.”—Saint Augustine, Confessions _____                “And what have you learned?” Annie was asked.                    Annie listened, staring out from veranda upon street of colors, culture, and charm—all new, enchanting, to her.  She had wanted to go, to see and learn, and so they went […]

          “There are more I want to write,” he told.           “Then write,” she answered.  Sensing hesitation, unwanted silence after but unreadiness to say, she continued in erasure of the pause.  “Don’t ask, and don’t explain.  Just write.  It’s your art, your adventure, your own experience in creation—make it.  Don’t conform and hide to fit […]

               “Jesus’ transfiguration was an experience of his divinity shining through his humanity.  In that brilliance, Peter, James, and John, saw more clearly the fullness of who Jesus was.  It was beyond anything they had seen or experienced before.  This transfiguration took their breath away.  Though they might not have been ready to receive this […]

               In amber of evening light, James witnessed Annie in creation.  Silent in chair, he observed as Annie composed that which appeared to her in silence and thought-openness to inspirations.                 Her hand moved intermittent, and he watched through thought-pauses and after-bursts of pen over open page; observing details and the way she looked and […]

               There were days when the greater stories would not write, and when such was, he wrote the ones that would.                 So it happened—at libraries and bookstores, coffee shops and street sides—as Annie read or rested near to him when she would feel an energy shift: energy of eyes and attention in sudden fix […]

               “There is only so long that a person can keep her enthusiasm locked away within her heart before she longs to share it with a fellow soul, and Alma had many decades of thoughts much overdue for sharing.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things                He had a quietness that listened, and eyes that […]

               In quiet room, Annie read by light of showing sunrise, golden as it broke, and enrichment of aura from lamp of soft-white glow that, near, illuminated self and page before muting into oneness with room and sun as it dispelled into room beyond.                Outside, Annie looked on the shadows of trees silhouetted in […]