By JIM NICHOLS Fellow Spirit of Abilene contributor Nancy Patrick recently referenced the book Hind’s Feet on High Places. It is a story following the character Much-Afraid as she encounters guidance from God. Hearing about that book I had read long ago, I searched our bookshelves at home and found our yellowed copy. As I opened the cover, I was
Read moreBy JIM NICHOLS That question was implied in a devotional item I was reading, and it caused me to wonder how I would answer it. My first connection was an ecology illustration that I have mentioned before. Ecology considers how forms of life relate to and interact with their environment. Their environment consists of the other organisms plus the physical
Read moreBy JIM NICHOLS The newspaper, radio, and television headlines speak about returning to normal when this pandemic wanes. It is worth asking what this means. What is the definition of “normal”? One of the curious aspects of the early Genesis stories is that God tells Adam to “name” all the other creatures. A reasonable explanation is to understand this was
Read moreBy JIM NICHOLS These are perplexing times for a scientist, at least they are for me. First, we have lived through a decade when a few otherwise perfectly logical people have questioned the value of childhood vaccinations. To virtually every medically connected scientist, vaccine availability has been one of the top two or three most important and, frankly, wonderful historical
Read moreBy JIM NICHOLS One dictionary defines “platitude” as a “remark or statement, especially one with a moral content, that has been used too often to be interesting or thoughtful.” Examples would include “Forgive and forget” or “It is what it is.” The list goes on and most of us do not even really hear these phrases because, although they once
Read moreBy JIM NICHOLS It was a perfect place on a sunny day. The asphalt was black and smooth. White lines were painted with precise slants with four parallel rows stretching the length of the parking lot. It was bounded by a residence hall on one side and academic buildings on the other three. Driveways led into the area, but there
Read moreBy JIM NICHOLS Ordinarily, a trip to the grocery store before the sun came up would be unthinkable for me; I am a breakfast eater and I have difficulty functioning well before orange juice and cereal. However, these are not ordinary times. So, when the local market installed a twice a week 6-9 a.m. period reserved for (as the announcement
Read moreBy JIM NICHOLS Like many others, I have constructed a list of one-liners over the years. These are phrases or paragraphs that have spoken truths clearly and, often, in unexpected ways. I frequently have these on separate small pieces of paper and they have no particular relationship to one another except that, for some reason, they spoke to me at
Read moreBy JIM NICHOLS Anthropologist Adam P. Johnson has suggested an analogy concerning how students and, by implication, all humans change and grow. He suggests that during the baking of a cake the initial state is just a collection of ingredients in a bowl. If the ingredients are varied, the resulting cake will be different. Furthermore, the real magic occurs when
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