Yearly Archives: 2016

In Memory of My Beautiful Aunt

Posted by Caleb Coy on

The past few months have been hard for my family. Just over a month ago we lost my grandmother, and this past Monday my aunt passed away after decades of battling cancer. Hers is a miracle of a story, but not in the way you’d expect. Hers is not a miracle of physical healing, but spiritual healing. When she was a little girl, her favorite movie was The Sound of Music. In one of the famous songs, Maria the governess sings of “whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens,” and all her favorite things that she thinks of when times are bad, “when the dog bites, when the bee stings.” My Aunt Annie lived her life with the ability to “not feel so bad” through enormous trials, and to help others “not feel so bad” through the remembrance of favorite things. Throughout most of her life, her very soul radiated with the persistence of love and fondness for people and the good things they bring, despite a lifelong assault of pain and woe.
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The Trust Deficit: A Sign of Political Times

Posted by Caleb Coy on

You know it’s a sign of bad times when there is a trust deficit between the candidate and most of its party members in both major political parties. While most elections are obviously marked with distrust of opposing candidates, this one seems too frequently punctuated by embarrassing distrust of candidates from their own supporters. That should be alarming to anyone who normally expects a democratic election to pump out qualified leaders.
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“Keep Your Opinions To Yourself.” No.

Posted by Caleb Coy on

You don’t know what you’re talking about. Keep your opinion to yourself.

There is a thing we love to tell people when we strongly disagree with them, but wouldn’t dare tell someone who agrees with us completely. It generally goes that if you speak your mind often enough, you fill find people who will tell you to keep your opinion to yourself. They are literally requesting that you simply to not speak what you think at all on the matter. Find somebody you disagree with enough, and you might do the same.
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In Memory of My Grandmother, the Saint

Posted by Caleb Coy on

One of my earliest and most consistent memories of my grandmother is of her changing the flowers that would sit behind the pulpit above the baptismal pool. It may seem odd that such a mundane and routine memory stands out to me, but I think it epitomizes how she lived her life, in service of the small things that made life beautiful.
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“Tell It Like It Is”: A Frequently Abused Phrase

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Frequently Abused Phrases: “Tell It Like It Is”

The other day I heard a fella give praise about another fella because he “calls a spade a spade,” meaning that he’s blunt enough to address things how they are. We value the qualities of plainspokenness, forthrightness, conversational grit. We don’t like it when people beat around the bush when they have something to say. We don’t trust people who always seem to speak in code or tread through every statement as if scared to offend someone somewhere. I get that.
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