Posts By: Ken Rummer

Sightings

Presented To A girl and a Bible   By Ken Rummer “Did you write this?” I glanced at the page. Squarish letters in black ink with variable width strokes. Just the kind I used to make with a chisel-end pen. Just the kind I inscribed on numerous baptismal certificates and wedding records over the years…. Read more »

Sightings

The Trail An Invitation by Ken Rummer   There’s a trail I’d like to show you, the one that passes behind our place. It was part of the appeal of the property for me. For some reason, “By the High Trestle Trail” seemed like an address of some distinction. Now I get to live here…. Read more »

Sightings

Silence as praise The sound of no hands clapping by Ken Rummer     When the music ended, nobody clapped. I was the guest violin soloist for a performance with the high school concert band in the next town. It was their winter concert, to a full house. We were playing music by John Williams,… Read more »

Sightings

Drawing with smoke Skywriting and other short-lived arts by Ken Rummer   The line is thin and gray, and loopy in an old-fashioned, cursive way. I notice it, quite by chance, through the glass of the sliding door to the deck, and it draws me to the pane for a closer look.  An elegant, gently… Read more »

Sightings

Growing old Encore time? by Ken Rummer     Ut enim non omne vinum, sic non omnis natura vetustate coacescit. As indeed not every wine, so not every person with the passage of years grows sour.   Cicero, De Senectute (On Old Age), from section 66, my translation   Now that I’m retired, I find I’m wondering more about… Read more »

Sightings

  Pentecost Possibilities and Surprises by Ken Rummer Red banners. Strange tongues. Wind and fire. Pentecost Sunday (May 20) is almost here!  The keynote story can be found in the second chapter of Acts, but my excitement for the day goes back to another story, a surprising one from my own life. Toward the end… Read more »

Sightings

Measuring A Life Wonderings, Fears, and Taking Stock by Ken Rummer Now in the seventh decade of my life, I wonder how I have done. Has my life been well-lived? Have I made the most of it? Has it mattered? As a teenager, I had a Peanuts cartoon on my wall. Snoopy is resting/sleeping on… Read more »

Sightings

Rocks and Stones Excavations In Memory by Ken Rummer   I noticed that my last post got a little deep in the rocks  (https://www.presbyterianmission.org/today/2018/02/02/sightings-11/). And I started wondering why. It might go back to my early years. At some point in childhood, I got into rocks. I think it was fossils that did it. One… Read more »

Sightings

Under My Feet Soundings In Soil And Stone by Ken Rummer   Under the ice, that’s where we would have been 14,000 years ago, if we’d been here, on this land where our house now stands. During a period of widespread glacial advance that geologists call the Wisconsin, a giant tongue of ice crept into… Read more »

Sightings

The View A temporary blessing by Ken Rummer   I’m going to miss the view. I knew it wouldn’t be forever, this view from the back of our new house. Sooner or later, the owners of the field beyond the trail would get an offer they wouldn’t refuse, and the field would begin to sprout… Read more »