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...