(a Steve Orr Bible Reflection) I don't know how long I lay there, eyes fixed on the starry skies above. Even as a five-year-old, I was a free-range kid. So, it was a while before anyone came looking for me that night. Did I see Sputnik (Russian for "fellow traveler"), the Earth’s first artificial satellite? I did see something arcing across the night sky—blinking, blinking. But really, who knows? There is some controversy over whether the satellite was actually visible to t

It is common to talk about the weather in Texas (and elsewhere). Is it going to rain today? (Usually not much in Texas in August!) Most evenings, I watch the weather man (aka weather person, sometimes weather woman) on a local station. I learn what the temperature was today and what to expect for the next 10 days. In Central Texas, it will be “hot,” which is not really news. We probably won’t establish a record this month for triple digit days (temperature over 100), but the

"September is the other January." — Gretchen Rubin This week is a strange one. For the past decade and more, the beginning of September has meant extra events on our family’s personal calendar. Meet the Teacher nights, PTA kick-offs, Youth events, Band practices… All of that and settling into the routine of the new school year–new schedules to remember, new teachers to get to know, new friends in our orbit, new lessons to learn. August and September meant change. This was th

(a Steve Orr Bible reflection) A talented musician wrote a song about my hometown. Actually, more than one musician has written a song about Paducah, Kentucky. But I’m thinking of George Coryell, a hometown contemporary of mine. He wrote and performed “Paddlewheels.” It’s a fine little song about Paducah that includes many of the town’s hallmarks. Chief among those is Paducah’s two rivers and the paddlewheel-driven riverboats that ply them. We played down by the river, wh

For my Aussie friends and family, a garden is all the land next to their house with flowers, trees, and grass. It is the equivalent to what we Americans refer to as our yard or lawn, which, to the British, is a hard, often paved or concrete area. Our garden is their “veggie patch” or even their “allotment.” God’s garden is full of beautiful flowers and trees. Ours was not. I grew up on a small 90-acre farm in rural Pennsylvania, and we always planted a vegetable garden. My mo

(a Steve Orr Bible reflection) Dad only worked at the brothel for about a week. There was in my hometown what was then called “a house of ill repute.” I could write a lot about that place and the fact that even children knew about it. But that is a story for another time. This is how Dad came to work at our everybody-knows-about-it brothel. Dad worked for his cousin, Norman, as a “brick and tile man” or “brickie.” Norman, a general contractor, had agreed to make some r

Have you ever been on “cloud nine” (not eight, or ten), meaning you were exceedingly happy and joyful? (The idiom probably comes from the high thunder clouds that were listed as number nine in earlier weather classifications.) You probably thought that “every cloud has a silver lining,” and were having a good day. The cloud formations in Papua New Guinea are majestic and beautiful. I often viewed the giant altocumulus clouds, often bringing thunder and lightning. At other t

(a Steve Orr Bible reflection) How’s life going? Do you sometimes feel like Wile E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons? No matter what approach he takes, no matter how sophisticated, he never succeeds in capturing that pesky bird! His nemesis is faster and smarter. He just can’t win. The problem: Mr. Coyote is stuck inside a paradox, a Catch-22. Mark Twain describes a coyote as “a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry.” If Twain is right, there is no w

Did you ever fall or get hit in the head and “see stars”? You felt dizzy and saw flashing lights in your head. Those are not the kinds of stars that I am writing about. I once took an airplane trip to northern California with a pilot friend of mine. We were in a small single engine aircraft and at night we opened our sleeping bags and slept out under one of the wings of the plane. It was dark, but the sky was filled with stars, millions of them. I remember the immense amaze

(a Steve Orr Bible Reflection) Many people want to be the people other people think about. There’s a preoccupation with being the topic of every conversation, being the focus of every moment, being the Main Character. Part and parcel: certain phrases we toss about on social media posts, in self-help books, and in our real world conversations. Likely you’ve heard them: "If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch!" "Go big or go home!" "Cookies are for closers