dual personalities

Month: April, 2026

April 3, 2026

O Sacred Head, now wounded

by chuckofish

It is the culmination of Holy Week. Good Friday and on to Easter!

But tomorrow is also my father’s birthday.

Amazing to think he was born 104 years ago! He died in his seventieth year and as I am turning 70 in a few weeks, I am feeling reflective.

The older I get, the more I think I am like him and less like my precious mother. We have the same curiosity about certain things, but lack the genius that my siblings inherited from our mother. We have the same weaknesses and insecurities. We are introverts. I find myself driving to the P.O. just to get out of the house like he did. He was a bad example to me in many ways and that has helped me avoid some pitfalls. But then, I never took part in WWII, nor did I have to support a family. I have no idea whether he was a Believer. Is he in heaven? Is he in hell? I cannot say. He never went to church with us, although he was a card-carrying Episcopalian his whole life. But we know that frequently means nothing. He is, in the final analysis, a mystery to me.

I hope I am not a complete mystery to my children. I mean, you never know everything about a person. We all have our secrets. But I think they know me pretty well. And if they have a question, they can ask. Only God knows our true heart. There is no escaping Him.

(And never forget this about ANCIII.)

I went to our Maundy Thursday service last night and it was wonderful. I held it together until two soloists sang this song during communion:

We had our high school cellist accompanying them as well. And here’s a hymn for Good Friday:

Anyway, have a blessed Easter. I pray that all those who go to a service on Sunday for the first time this year will want to return before next Christmas.

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April 2, 2026

The full extent of His love

by chuckofish

It is Maundy Thursday. I watched Sinclair Ferguson’s lesson on the Foot Washing in Five Stages–physically and theologically, in which He reveals Himself as the One who served us in order that we might serve others.

I read Luke 22 and reformed commentary on the subject of the Last Supper. And I started watching the Hillsdale College online course on C.S. Lewis.

I also listened to a barred owl outside my window last night being very talkative.

All highly recommended.

And here’s a poem by George Herbert (1593-1632): “Love”

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
            Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
    From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
            If I lack’d anything.

‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’
            Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
            I cannot look on Thee.’
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
            ‘Who made the eyes but I?’

‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame
            Go where it doth deserve.’
‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’
            ‘My dear, then I will serve.’
‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’
            So I did sit and eat.

(The photo of the grape hyacinths is from Don.)

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April 1, 2026

How’s it goin’?

by chuckofish

I did some outside work yesterday and it wore me out in, like, 15 minutes. But it’s going to rain for the rest of the week and through Easter (typical) so I wanted to get out there.

Anyway, I thought it was really cool that Gatlin Didier @gatlin_didier and his grandmother Arleta Kay Didier @grannybibbins went to the White House last week.

I guess they had a great time:

I have bought their beef (shipped nationwide) and it is excellent!

This article in the NYTimes about the end of the free-range childhood made me think of my own childhood and how my friend Leah and I would walk all over downtown Clayton, eat lunch at a diner and walk home to her house. We would ride bikes down McKnight Road over to Delmar (before highway I-70 was built) to go to some drugstore to buy candy. We would be gone for hours. We were in fourth grade–9 or 10 years old in 1966. Leah was a free-range kid to be sure and I’m not sure my mother would have approved had she really known what was going on. But I survived and was probably the better for having been pushed out of my comfort zone. My children who grew up in the eighties and nineties did not do this and the twins who are that age now would never. And I’m not sure they could do that and find their way home! Different times.

And this is cool.

Have a great day!

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