Everything around me is different. The tall, coniferous trees at the edge of the conservation area marking the western boundary of our rental property belie the truth that I am nowhere near home. At a glance, they could pass for a species native to Ontario, which is the first thing my son pointed out when he saw them towering over the yard. Their slender, skyward-stretching trunks mimic the palm trees that thrive here in Central Florida, but instead of the iconic spreading leaves that show up on most every postcard sent from this sunkissed state, the branches on these trees are covered in unusually long needles with small pockets of seed cones mostly hidden from sight. There’s a small lawn sprawled out between the house and the trees, but again, it only looks like the kind of lawns that I’ve walked barefoot across since I took my first steps. In truth, the turf here is thick and coarse and crunches underfoot, more straw than grass. In a cardboard box in my parents’ home, there’s a ph
"As a novelist no less than as a teacher, I try not to stack the deck unduly but always let doubt and darkness have their say along with faith and hope, not just because it is good apologetics - woe to him who tries to make it look simple and easy - but because to do it any other way would be to be less than true to the elements of doubt and darkness that exist in myself no less than in others." - Frederick Buechner, Now and Then