My father's hands. Strong and rugged, they bear the marks of a lifetime of hard work. But more than anything, these are loving hands. Hands that held me many years ago. Hands that have held my children. Hands that I long to hold again. Our prayers are with you tomorrow, dad.

Here is something that he wrote this past August. He called it "The Bare Truth."

This world is poor to give me riches
The pleasures of youth are fleeting
The joys of creation are in decay
Its pains and groans are on full display
The things I have put my trust in
Have come to rob my dwelling
But what I have truly given Thee
Its banks are surely swelling

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I don't see my parents very often, usually only about once a year. When we were visiting them this Thanksgiving my father recalled a few memories from when I was a toddler, about the age that my son is now. He told me about how he would take me on walks in the forest, about how he would carry me in a backpack when he went flyfishing. Perched high on his back I would fall asleep as he waded upstream in search of trout. I have no memory of this. But I can almost hear the sounds of those remote Oregon waters. I can almost feel my arms draped around my father's strong shoulders. I hope that someday I will be able to speak of similar things to Johnny. And I hope that my words will be as meaningful to him as my father's have been to me.

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I took this picture last night as I was riding my bike along the lakefront. The full moon was rising above the water in the most amazing way. Just as the moon became visible the final scene from the Epilogue to Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita began to play on my ipod. Here is an excerpt:

“Ivan Nikolayich now knows and understands everything…But he knows that there is still something that is beyond his control. He cannot control what happens at the springtime full moon…From the bed to the moon stretches a broad path of moonlight and up it is climbing a man in a white cloak with a blood-red lining. Beside him walks a young man in a torn chiton and with a disfigured face. The two are talking heatedly, arguing, trying to agree about something…Then the moonbeam begins to shake, a river of moonlight floods out of it and pours in all directions. From the flood materializes a woman of incomparable beauty and leads towards Ivan a man with a stubble-grown face, gazing fearfully around him…”

I took the picture with my iPhone, the only camera in my possession at the time. The image was very noisy, of course, but I tried to use that to my advantage in post-processing.

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