While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.
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“The opposite of a cage is a vulture…”
———Kenan Orhan
——--I Am My Country (in the short story “The Bird Keeper’s Moral”)
My husband’s Buddhist teaching gig took us to Branson MO, where he spoke at a Unity Sunday service. I am no fan of any practice that requires attendance at a sit-down meeting, same place, same time, every week. Call it Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism—it’s all church to me. Add to that Branson’s collection of southern drawls reminiscent of sherriffs snatching freedom-hungry diners from lunch counters. In Branson, I felt hemmed in. I hunkered down.
On the drive home, we stretched our legs at Table Rock Lake. The overlook inside the visitors’ center put us at eye level with cypress treetops, where hundreds of vultures perched. Their posture mirrored my prejudice, lurky and hunched. I leaned toward the window for a closer look, but the glass walls caged me. When a scout swooped in, the wake ascended, wave after silent wave drawn ever higher in ever-widening circles. Wings outspread, the vultures worshiped the thermals, transforming this non-believer.
****
“The opposite of a cage is a vulture…”
———Kenan Orhan
——--I Am My Country (in the short story “The Bird Keeper’s Moral”)
My husband’s Buddhist teaching gig took us to Branson MO, where he spoke at a Unity Sunday service. I am no fan of any practice that requires attendance at a sit-down meeting, same place, same time, every week. Call it Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism—it’s all church to me. Add to that Branson’s collection of southern drawls reminiscent of sherriffs snatching freedom-hungry diners from lunch counters. In Branson, I felt hemmed in. I hunkered down.
On the drive home, we stretched our legs at Table Rock Lake. The overlook inside the visitors’ center put us at eye level with cypress treetops, where hundreds of vultures perched. Their posture mirrored my prejudice, lurky and hunched. I leaned toward the window for a closer look, but the glass walls caged me. When a scout swooped in, the wake ascended, wave after silent wave drawn ever higher in ever-widening circles. Wings outspread, the vultures worshiped the thermals, transforming this non-believer.