Exercise is a good habit; my go-to aerobic choice is running five kilometers at a time. Establishing a habit can be a gradual process, with fits and starts or incremental adjustments, and I have enjoyed observing this process in myself. As a sixty-something, I’ve wanted to be physically fit, but have no interest in training … Read more
Born at the Portland Oregon Zoo on 1 February 2025, Tula-tu is a healthy baby girl Asian elephant. See the zoo website here and check out our pics and videos below. To nurse, Tula-tu must get her little trunk out of her way and almost go up on tippy-toes to reach Mama. As any baby … Read more
My surname is Moore, not uncommon in America. The first of my ancestors came to the colony of New Hampshire in 1738. Since that is eight generations before me, I have 256 grandparents from that time, only one of which was a Moore. However, many other ancestors related by marriage to those eight Moore generations … Read more
Jesus calls us to love God and also other people. How? It has nothing to do with infatuation and maybe little to do with emotion. Can this love be mostly an attitude? Can it be, to begin with, an acceptance of our common predicament as created earthly things? Other people, other animals, rocks, plants—we are … Read more
Spirituality These posts concern spirituality from a Christian perspective. i dig Jesus June 2023 Demons Tag Along to Boucher Creek Nov 2024 (prep for spiritual retreat) Going Down Willingly December 2024 (Grand Canyon spiritual retreat) Begin by fighting off annoyance February 2025 (post retreat musings) Love is a Life Transfusion February 2025 (post retreat musings) … Read more
I know why the demons declined to join me on my Grand Canyon spiritual retreat. One of the things they most enjoy is watching me get annoyed with day-to-day living. They may not have a hand in creating annoyance, but they probably try to help me focus on being annoyed and feeling justified instead of … Read more
Like all great storytellers, Rudyard Kipling knew how to turn a phrase. He spun tales for children that would hold the attention of any adult. In How the Whale Got His Throat a small ‘Stute Fish advises an unsuspecting hungry cetacean where to find a solitary shipwrecked mariner adrift on a raft. The fish has … Read more
I have returned safely from a solo backpack trip into one of the most remote backcountry areas of Grand Canyon National Park. I mentioned in a previous blog post that this would be a spiritual retreat of five days and four nights. Here is a photo from the South Rim at Pima Point: Details will … Read more
This post is before my upcoming solo backpack trip to Boucher Creek in the Grand Canyon. I’ll provide a little background beforehand, then follow up with another post after the trip with photos and commentary. The plan calls for a spiritual retreat, similar to what some Christians do when they, for example, go to a … Read more
People today yearn for spiritual things but are less and less attracted to churches. Religion provides an organized way to delve into spiritual matters, but most people would rather wing it. Why call yourself Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, or Jew when you can simply be a spiritual person? This attractive idea suggests that we should be … Read more
Of course, that title is a riff on the essay by Sigmund Freud about how societies need religion to function. He was not religious but saw the ideals of selfless love, generosity, and care for poor people as foundational for human communities. The title also riffs on a song that riffs on the Freud essay. … Read more
Many people sometimes feel a certain sense of place. This feeling can come from varied ideas and experiences and, therefore, be impossible to pin down. Whatever it is, many acknowledge it, and few are oblivious. While physical places take up space, like cities, houses, restaurants, mountains, and beaches, the sense of them is primarily mental. … Read more
In college during the mid-1970s, I couldn’t help being strongly impacted by a Dannon Yogurt commercial set in Soviet Georgia that suggested a link between yogurt eating and longevity. Yogurt was not something our family knew about at that time, and the grocery stores did not yet have entire cold cases filled with it. This … Read more
If you have read Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, you know the novel is long, and the author goes off on numerous tangents. These can be engaging, depending on the reader’s personality. None of them make it into the movies. One side story is how the evil innkeeper, Thénardier, had previously been at Waterloo with … Read more
The typically dreary, drippy spring weather in Northwest Oregon had ended early this year, firming up the muddy forest trails. Even as a new resident, Blake White knew these conditions were atypical. Warm, sunny weather is never guaranteed here until July. But this morning, Blake slept in, feeling perfectly comfortable in his tent. Early June … Read more
The title, Words Connect Us, is a hypothesis if one asks, “Connect us to what?” I suggest two primary connections: ourselves and other people. The third way is connecting to our physical surroundings, the world, the universe, and the simple fact of our existence. Humans use words as symbols, metaphors, and mental placeholders associated with … Read more
We live on the northwest side of Portland, Oregon, about elevation 500 feet, with the ridge line of the Tualatin Mountain Range rising to over 1000 feet to our north. Skyline Drive runs along the crest, with Forest Park to the northeast. Straddling Skyline Drive and to its southeast, homes lie on large wooded lots, … Read more
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People come in many shapes, sizes, and colors. And with widely varying music tastes. I’m a boomer, so Taylor Swift doesn’t do much for me. Yet, that might not be the only reason, O Reader, that you may avert your eyes or click away from this post. I will try to keep you here a … Read more
Consider the humorous convergence of human ideas separated by thirty-five centuries. We think we are so advanced, yet two things spoken of mythologically in the Bible have acquired literal meaning today. Lately, I delved into how humans might have gained language and whether any of the other animals could learn to communicate with a smidgeon … Read more