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Here Try Some of This Ointment

April 17, 2024 by Watt Childress 4 Comments

Imagine life where everyone pitches in with a mix of chores and creative leisure. One barely sees this balance from today’s towers of ranking prey.
[Read More]

Filed Under: Culture, Featured Writing, Poetry, Spirit, ULE Tagged With: Al-Eizariya, Appalachia, Bethany, Falafel, Isabel Wilkerson, Israel, Jesus, Knoxville, Mary, Nard, Origin, Palestine, Solomon, Spikenard

Old Goat Plunges into Another Year

January 6, 2023 by Watt Childress 7 Comments

Fifty winters after my emergence on earth I climbed up a dune and surveyed the beach below. Over a hundred primates were reveling near the frothy hoof of Neah-Kah-Nie Mountain.
[Read More]

Filed Under: Culture, Featured Writing, Spirit Tagged With: Capricorn, Jesus, Lamb Chop, New Year, Pan, Polar Plunge, winter rituals

Ave Chingada

December 23, 2020 by Watt Childress 2 Comments

Trained up in the Bible Belt, I’ve heard many righteous hellfire sermons rebuking the Whore of Babylon. I don’t recall much mention of the Pimp. [Read More]

Filed Under: Culture, Featured Writing, Poetry, Spirit Tagged With: Andrew Johnson, Annunciation, Babylon, Chattel Slavery, Christ, Condor, Constantine, Eagle, Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, James Henley Thornwell, Jesus, Malinchi, Mars, Mary, Octavio Paz

Message, Moo-Cow, Messiah

December 26, 2019 by Watt Childress 6 Comments

It seems absurd on the surface that anyone who brandishes the word “Christ” would feel more affinity for the ways of plutocrats than the teachings of our compassionate rabbi. Yet when the Word becomes flesh, it is a socially-conditioned reflex for humans to fixate on the box rather than the contents. [Read More]

Filed Under: Featured Writing, Spirit Tagged With: Christ, Dairy, Holiday, Jesus, Mariposa, Milk, Perry Como, Red Danish, Red Heifer, Simon Diaz, Tillamook County

Christmas for All Mankind

December 23, 2014 by Rick Bonn 2 Comments

We all have our favorite Christmas films, the ones that stir good cheer and remind us of family and home. But what of Advent, the season that culminates in that celebration? What films capture the painful waiting, struggle for peace, and desperation for change that often accompany this period before the joy? Alfonso Cuarón’s violent, R-rated Children of Men (2006) […]

Filed Under: Entertainment, Movies, Spirit, ULE Tagged With: Advent, Alfonso Cuaron, Children of Men, Christmas, Clive Owen, Greg Russinger, Jesus, P.D. James, Portland Foursquare

Grieving for the Green

April 22, 2012 by Watt Childress 6 Comments

On the morning of the first Earth Day a seven-year-old boy seached for salamanders in a creek. He didn’t know adults were launching a new holiday to encourage care for creation. His heart and mind were filled with amazement at the critters who lived under the damp mossy rocks. After lunch he climbed one of his favorite trees.

Filed Under: Books, Culture, Feature, Nature, Spirit, ULE Tagged With: Earth Day, Jesus, Spring, The Giving Tree

Let’s do keep Christ in Christmas

December 21, 2011 by Sue Skinner 2 Comments

At this ancient Solstice time, when the great trees are honored (with the conifer in the living room), and the power of fire and return of the sun is invoked (with the burning of candles and the splashes of electric lights on our houses), the birth of Jesus, great dissident and rebel, is celebrated by many. In our present era of mind-numbing consumerism, […]

Filed Under: Culture, Feature, Politics, Spirit, ULE Tagged With: Christmas, Jesus

Surfing Pop Culture: Fairy Tales and Hope

November 15, 2011 by Rick Bonn 4 Comments

Can stories help us remember who we really are? Can they offer fresh hope for our lives? ABC’s new series Once Upon A Time thinks so, agreeing with some of my favorite storytellers: Jesus, Charles Dickens, and Walter Brueggemann.

It was Jesus who once said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ That came to mind while watching Once Upon A Time last week because the whole premise of that series hinges on a child.

Filed Under: Art, Culture, Spirit, ULE Tagged With: Brueggemann, Dickens, Fairy Tales, Jesus, Once Upon A Time

More Gleanings

Memoir

February 13, 2026 By Steven Mayer Leave a Comment

End of the Street

August 4, 2025 By Steven Mayer 2 Comments

Here Try Some of This Ointment

April 17, 2024 By Watt Childress 4 Comments

We are the Luminaries

August 8, 2023 By Watt Childress 2 Comments

Open Letter for Creation’s Caregivers

June 19, 2023 By Watt Childress 5 Comments

Additional Wisdom...

Readers’ Comments

  • R²
    January 7, 2026 at 7:19 am
    on Smart travel money helps care for places we love
    Couldn't agree with you more. We're dealing with that all right now trying to get the air museum in tillamook
  • Pam Wade
    December 6, 2025 at 8:29 am
    on Adventures with author Charles de Lint
    The first work I read by Charles de Lint was Greenmantle followed by Moonheart. Since then there has not been
  • Trudy
    October 8, 2025 at 2:42 pm
    on Hankering for Paradise: My Discovery of The Wave Crest Inn
    I stayed at the Wave Crest for a night in the late 70s. If I remember right, the cost was
  • K H
    September 24, 2025 at 8:09 am
    on The Genocide of the American Indian, and Their Refusal to Die
    This response is far from timely, I know. But in honor of the ancestors I thank you for helping us
  • Ronald Logan Buchansn
    September 22, 2025 at 12:35 am
    on Three Poems and a Mountain
    Logan, on my annual summer browsing at Jupitor's I read "Freewriting In A Parked Car" and instantly purchased your book.
More Comments...

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