Andrew Taylor-Troutman

Jesus famously told a parable about talents. He probably didn’t have in mind playing “Peace Like a River” on a dulcimer or dribbling a basketball between the legs.

“All the world’s a stage,” claimed the Bard. We are actors, but we rarely have the opportunity to write the script. Witness the past two years when our country has headed in a direction that, as a person of faith, I find morally reprehensible.

I was invited to an Eagle Scout ceremony. I was moved by the ritual, yet I also found myself as focused on the Scouts themselves, who fidgeted in the old church’s wooden pews in their freshly ironed uniforms. I sensed that they were waiting for something.

Any Tar Heel born and bred must not pick a former Dookie for their NBA fantasy league team. Full stop. Don’t misunderstand: I want to win. I’m in a fantasy league with my brother, father, uncle, and my two sons. We don’t play for money, yet bragging rights are priceless.

I was in a fraternity. We brothers gave each other nicknames: Stick and Stump and Leebo and Alien and JP and JC and BC. I was simply Trout.

“Volta” is Italian for “turn.” In poetry, particularly a sonnet, the term refers to a shift in tone or subject. As the song goes, “there is a season, turn, turn, turn.”

It’s now fall, and I have been musing on the verse Ecclesiastes 3:1, “To everything there is a season, and a time for every delight under heaven.” Pete Seeger wrote a tune to this verse, which the Byrds made famous with their guitar riff and harmonies.

The writer Annie Dillard died this week. In tribute to her, I first wrote these words now...

My friend worked in Prince George’s County in Maryland, and he was driving to work on the freeway on September 11, 2001, when two fighter jets roared into the air from Andrews Air Force Base.

My wife and I celebrated 19 years of marriage this week. Wendell Berry, the writer-farmer from Kentucky, passed away on Monday after 69 years of marriage to his wife, Tanya.