The Fshbwl

Listen to the Music

I started playing the trumpet when I was in the fourth grade. I could hardly contain myself when my parents brought home my first instrument. They set the rectangular black case down in front of me and my eyes stared at it with wild excitement.

Captive Free

Thérèse was good at being a kid. She, like many children, dreamed big dreams that seemed completely out of place for such a young one. Her imagination would run rampant with possibilities. But above all, above everything else that she dreamed of, Thérèse wanted to be a martyr.

Uncertainty Principle

We live in a constantly changing world. Things that we once saw as certain are no longer so. The certainties of the United States being immune from foreign attack were brought down along with the towers of the World Trade Center.

Becoming Human

Frederick Buechner had more reason than most to “steel himself against the harshness of reality.”

As a young boy, Buechner led a fairly usual life. He sang songs and listened to stories. He learned to swim and ride a bike.

Catching the Present

When Annie Dillard is looking for some present tense, she wants to be present in the moment, to experience all that the created world has to offer. She wants to be able to see, hear, taste, smell, and thrill at all her mind can sense and her spirit can take in. Whether it is prowling for praying mantis egg cases in January cold, stalking the coy coot or mysterious muskrats in silence along the creek bank, or being startled into awe at an explosion of starlings in flight from a cedar lit by the afternoon amber sun, for her, these still moments—“a free gift from the universe” (16)—are to be experienced in quiet, waiting, and longing.

Dandelions

“Those aren’t flowers sweetie ... they're weeds.” Those words are still etched into the recesses of my memory. I don’t imagine that my mother was being purposely malicious. On the contrary, I think she was just trying to teach her young boy that dandelions aren’t flowers, they’re weeds. I remember being so confused. After all, the dandelion was a beautiful bright yellow. It seemed to me to be a flower.

Basic Instincts

What is it that causes to salmon find their way back from the vast expanse of the sea to the single stream from which they had once emerged? What causes them to engage in the relentless fight against the current, battling danger after danger, expending every last ounce of energy they possess ...

Is It Enough?

“You know, Mother, that I have always wanted to become a saint.” Therese of Lisieux had great ambitions for someone so young. Even from early childhood, Therese wanted more than anything to please God, to show her love for Him, even to the point of wanting martyrdom. She entered a convent at Carmel, Spain when she was fifteen years old.

Collision

Annie Dillard sees shadows. As she muses along Tinker Creek in Virginia, surveying all the familiar places, she is pulled towards the shadows. She lurks along, gazing out at anything and everything, looking for those shadows. She searches vigilantly because she knows that the shadows do not cast themselves.

Sick of Solitude

Illness isolates. Sickness imposes solitude. When sickness strikes, when illness infects, the afflicted becomes alone.

The solitude of sickness is not the sought-after solitude of a sick-day home from school or work. It is not the temporary reprieve from the worries of the world due to a small sickness, a common cold.