Seth Haines's Blog, page 25

A Vocational Question

In September of 2016, I left my day job as an attorney. I hung up the old suit-and-tie and opted instead for jeans and a standby pair of black Adidas. (As an aside, my sense of fashion is such that I do not call my jeans “Denim” as some are prone to do these days. I only recently learned the term “Selvedge”.) I struck out into the world of words, hoping to find a way to carve out a living scratching sentences. As of the writing of this piece, I’ve not yet starved to death. (An accomplishment...

Are You Real?

I put off reading A.W. Tower’s The Pursuit of God for almost twenty years. (I suppose my years are showing.) Yesterday, I cracked the spine, and there I read some of the most beautiful writing on experiencing the presence of God. One passage in particular–a passage on the real man–captured me. Today, I’m recasting that passages in my own words.

I suppose the foundational question for today’s piece is this: In a digital world, a world of avatars and personal branding, what does it mean to be r...

The River

This is how a river loves:
shedding the linen fog of spring,
she opens herself
to the naked feet of men,
whispering what it means
to be made clean.

Step into my body of love,
the dust of living washed
from the soles of your feet.

Spinning new linen at dusk,
she repeats the words
she’s always known:

Having loved my own
who were in the world
I loved them to the end.

 

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The content here takes hours (and no small amount of spare change) to produce. If you enj...

If Dandelions Could Speak

Where the cinderblock of the coffee shop
meets the pavement of the parking lot,
there in that infertile groove
a lonely dandelion grows,
face spread to the sun.

Lift up your heart;
I lift it to the Lord.
Let us give thanks
to Lord our God;
It is right to give him
thanks and praise.

It is right to praise him, she says,
for the redeeming acts of love,
for the fertility of chance
and the life that brims
from the dust
of foundation
cracks.

 

***TINY MEMBERSHIP DRIVE***

The content...

Partnering to the Death (A Marriage Reflection)

It’s been six months since I first met my friends John and Margaret Paine. John and Margaret took vows at a tender age, just like Amber and I did. Their marriage started the way so many do, with hope, promise, and a commitment to love. But what happened along the way? The same things that happen to so many. The details are ordinary. Mundane, even. For clarity, though, let’s name them.

Long hours at the office. The difficulties of raising four children. The death of a business or two. The loss...

Normalizing Therapy (Or How To Ungoop Your Noggin)

In the autumn of 2013, I found myself walking into a new season, a season of sobriety. If you’ve followed my work for any amount of time, you know the story, how my inebriation grew from a great pain. (You can read this story in Coming Clean.) You know, too, that I was able to untangle my mental morass of pain and alcohol dependency only by way of a good therapist. That good therapist–he helped me find the road to recovery. For that, I’m grateful.

In these years of different life, I’ve contin...

Spring Questions – Exercise Your Observer

Spring’s annual resurrection has come to the Ozarks, and as is her way, she’s sprinkled her pixie dust over the dry bones of winter. The red buds have woken; she’s uncorked the sweet and sour perfume of the Bradford Pear trees. She’s called the songbirds back from Mexico, or Texas, or wherever. She’s cleaned up the boughs, prepared a place for them. Each morning I hear the cardinals and robins singing as if every tree were an avian cabaret.

The air is thick with the spring’s hope, and as I’m...

The Unrecorded Miracles

I read today’s lenten gospel passage, John 2:1-2. The story recounts how Mary strong-armed her son into performing the first recorded miracle at the wedding feast. I considered the passage, and this is what came. Enjoy.

***

The Unrecorded Miracles

These are the secret miracles:

the boy at the window
greeting the sun before
its eyelashes opened
over the mountain;

dirt drawings of
simple birds, his
blowing of that
dust to flight;

the neighbor widow’s
full flour sack, oil jar,
her house...

Ash Wednesday

“How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
Who’s sin is covered!”
—Psalm 32:1

Today is a day of ashes, a day to remember that we were dust and to dust we shall return.  In that, we consider the ends of our nature, the temporal nature of our desires. How does sin so easily entangle? How is it wound into all of us?

In the recognition of our ashenness, we can still find joy in this: Ash Wednesday marks a season of reflection on Christ’s march to the cross, his death, burial, and res...

Addict #1 (Rose’s Baptism)

Today’s poem was inspired by a reader email. Enjoy.

***

Rose emailed,
a street-walking
shelter-dweller,
sixty-two years
in the making,
thirty-eight of which
were stitched together
by heroin needles.

Daughter of the Pope,
sister of the molested,
aunt of the overdosed,
twin of poppies,
welfare patient
with tracks between
her toes, fingers,
elbow folds,

what’s to say
of Rose’s life,
except that
rock-bottom
pushed her
up in the water,
a stone rising
into new
concentric
circ...