by Barry Creamer | Feb 14, 2024 | Devotionals
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it And spills the upper boulder in the sun, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they...
by Barry Creamer | Feb 7, 2024 | Devotionals
Almost everyone is familiar with the opening phrase of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Da da da dum; da da da dum. The motif is now ubiquitous. Some riffs, rhythms, and even lyrics ensconce themselves in the mind so tenaciously it is hard to imagine a world without them:...
by Barry Creamer | Jan 31, 2024 | Devotionals
Already turned back from two trails by deep water, I took one covered by only a few inches of slow overflow from the nearby creek. Now pedaling inconsistently at a snail’s pace, I looked down to see a small frog cross just in front of me, swimming unevenly,...
by Barry Creamer | Jan 24, 2024 | Devotionals
The attached painting is by 19th Century German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich: Cross and Church in the Mountains, 1812. As a movement, Romanticism paints emotion, mystery, belonging, and nature on the Enlightenment’s rationalism, science, individualism, and...
by Barry Creamer | Jan 17, 2024 | Devotionals
I have a comfortable cabin under jeweled skies on a rocky, forested slope just across the Divide from the Rio Grande’s source. Circumstances allowing, I spend a week there each year. The other 51 weeks of the year, I offer it to a long-time friend, who in turn often...
by Barry Creamer | Jan 10, 2024 | Devotionals
In the height of Covid, passing a nurses’ station during one of my dad’s hospital stays, I heard one caregiver’s verbal jab at another, followed by the inaccurate clarification: “Oh, with this mask on, you can’t see my smile.” For the past five days, one stranger...
by Barry Creamer | Jan 3, 2024 | Devotionals
Feet-long ice spears fall freely and sporadically from tree limbs and utility lines as warming temperatures and gravity gradually strip them of the residue of this 3-day-long Texas winter. The woods are a giant arbor dog shaking off its cold bath in slow motion. In...
by Barry Creamer | Dec 27, 2023 | Devotionals
Empathy is human. I remember Fidel Castro. To the best of my knowledge, his critics are right. Yet what brings him to my mind has little to do with the disapprobation he earned during his 59 years as an enemy of western democracy and scourge to his nation’s people and...
by Barry Creamer | Dec 20, 2023 | Devotionals
Throughout most of my life, a spare tire was the difference between a flat ending a road trip and only delaying it—a fact affirmed by the axiomatic idiom about rubber meeting road. My teenaged kids all learned to change tires because their treads (and ours) were as...
by Barry Creamer | Dec 13, 2023 | Devotionals
As our vehicle approaches the summit of Wolf Creek Pass in Southwest Colorado, I explain the concept of the continental divide to 2 of my young grandchildren. Ascending one moment, I explain that if a flake of snow falls on this side of the mountain, when it melts, it...
