Here, there, and everywhere

He got cancer. A rare kind of cancer, his doctor told him. He knew he was looking death in the eye.

He remembered an old saying: “There are no atheists in foxholes.” When bullets zip past your head, you don’t turn to philosophical theories for comfort.

And he realized that no matter how sincere his convictions about a God who was inside, outside, and everywhere, a God embodied in the world and in him, at that moment what he wanted was a God who could do something about his cancer. A God who was more than an abstract understanding.

He realized he still yearned for that God “out there.”

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Categories: Soft Edges

Tags: God, fear, cancer

Jul

2019

Encounter with a crashing boar

Author: Jim Taylor

The trail that leads down to the shores of Okanagan Lake clings to a steep hillside. One side of it goes up like a cliff, held together a network of juniper roots. The other side of the trail is a tangle of thorny wild blackberry bushes that not even Peter Rabbit would welcome being thrown into.

I was going down the trail when I saw something with its head in among the blackberry canes.

Then the animal pulled its head back to glare at me. It was a boar. A wild boar. A very big wild boar. With vicious tusks.

It came charging up the hill on its spindly legs.

I tried to back away. My feet slipped. I landed on my back. The boar was almost on top of me. I started kicking frantically to keep the beast away.

That’s when Joan shook me awake.

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Categories: Soft Edges

Tags: fear, dreams, boar, interpretation

Sep

2016

Terrified rider on a runaway planet

Author: Jim Taylor

There’s a tasteless joke about an old man who died peacefully in his sleep. He just closed his eyes, took a final breath, and was gone. “That’s how I want to die,” said his son. “Not terrified and screaming, like the passengers in his car.” I’m one of those passengers, and I’m riding in a car called Earth. And I’m terrified that a bunch of drivers may be taking the planet we’re all riding on off a cliff. The driver may be Donald Trump, if he gets to be president of the most powerful nation on earth. Or it may be Bashar al Assad, who is not president of a powerful nation, but whose regime has been catalyst to a civil war that has generated the greatest flood of refugees since World War II. Or it may be the faceless CEOs of massive corporations like Exxon and Goldman Sachs, who are quite content to let the planet crash as long as they get their bonuses.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: fear, climate change, experiment

Jim Taylor's Columns - 'Soft Edges' and 'Sharp Edges'

Here, there, and everywhere

Encounter with a crashing boar

Terrified rider on a runaway planet

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